Retreat

Each year, our program organizes a retreat for all the residents at Lake Tahoe. We are relieved from our clinical responsibilities Friday afternoon and return by bus on Sunday. For that weekend, we have no clinical duties and we bond with each other on the ski slopes and over delicious meals. The department puts us up at a fancy resort and pays for additional faculty to cover the operating rooms. It's always a blast.

I write this blog because I'm truly grateful to be at my residency program. Although we work hard and we have tough and challenging days, we are really appreciated. When I talk to attendings who cover that weekend, I realize that we make up an integral part of the anesthesia infrastructure and when we are gone on our retreat, everyone appreciates us a little more. It's wonderful, though, that our department is so liberal in having us enjoy ourselves because resident well-being is gaining more and more attention these days. While a weekend off like this certainly helps prevent burn-out, we also bond with each other closely, building our peer support structure. I've had the most amazing co-residents, and I will miss them after we graduate this year.