See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/275119919

Iserson's Getting Into a Residency: A Guide for Medical Students

Article  in  Annals of Emergency Medicine · November 2013

DOI: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2013.06.075

CITATIONS READS

0 2,912

1 author:

Douglas Scott Franzen

University of Washington Seattle
28 PUBLICATIONS   66 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Book Review View project

National Clinical Assessment Tool in Emergency Medicine (NCAT-EM) View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Douglas Scott Franzen on 23 October 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS
Resuscitate! How Your Community Can Improve Survival From Sudden Cardiac Arrest
Review by Kevin G. Seaman, MD
Iserson’s Getting Into a Residency: A Guide for Medical Students
Review by Douglas S. Franzen, MD, MEd
0196 0644/$ see front matter
Copyright © 2013 by the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Resuscitate! How Your Community Can Improve
Survival From Sudden Cardiac Arrest
Eisenberg MS
University of Washington Press
288 pages, $29.95
ISBN-10: 0295988894
ISBN-13: 978-0295988894
It’s a busy night in the emergency department. By radio the
paramedics provide advance notice: “This is Medic 5, treating
a cardiac arrest with full ACLS, en route to your location, ETA
5 minutes.” You learn that the arrest was unwitnessed and the
initial rhythm was asystole, with no change after therapy. You
also anticipate the outcome: after arrival you will confirm there
are no treatable causes and then terminate the code. You wonder
whether there is a better way to handle this number one cause of
mortality in your community, reflecting on the ideal with which
you started medicine to save lives and reduce suffering. The
answer is undeniably yes. Resuscitate! How Your Community Can
Improve Survival From Sudden Cardiac Arrest (2nd edition)
delivers critical tools to achieve these goals.
Resuscitate! addresses the wide variation in cardiac arrest survival
across communities and provides solutions. In this book by Mickey
S. Eisenberg, MD, the reader learns that a team of community
members, 911 dispatchers, emergency medical services (EMS)
providers, and hospital personnel must work together to save a
victim from sudden cardiac arrest. Emergency physicians are ideally
educated and positioned to marshal community team resources
needed to maximize survival, and the techniques presented can be
applied to improve inhospital cardiac arrest survival equally well.
Within the text, Dr. Eisenberg poses the question, how often when
moving to a new location do people ask what a community’s
survival rate is for witnessed ventricular fibrillation in cardiac arrest?
Do you know what your community’s survival rate is?
This book is written in an easy to read style accessible to
citizens, elected officials, fire chiefs, and emergency dispatchers,
as well as the medical community. This broad focus is important
because, as Dr. Eisenberg accurately identifies, “it takes a system
to save a victim,” a concerted effort through all links of the chain
of survival to improve outcomes in the approximately 10 minute
window available to make a difference. The author has succeeded
at writing a book understandable by nonmedical readers while
incorporating the science underpinning the actions; he rates
the strength of association of 50 factors to survival from cardiac
arrest and applies the research to provide recommendations
554 Annals of Emergency Medicine
effective at maximizing survival. Dr. Eisenberg creatively
identifies low hanging fruit (such as rapid dispatch, dispatcher
assisted telephone cardiopulmonary resuscitation [CPR]
instruction of bystanders, and EMS provider high performance
CPR) that can be implemented rapidly and cost effectively
to maximize community cardiac arrest survival.
This second edition of Resuscitate! retains the best features
of the previous edition while adding new content to chapters such
as effectively communicating “A Plan of Action” and predicting
“A Vision for the Future.” There is also an addendum describing
the Resuscitation Academy. This book serves as the text reference
for the academy, an active effort to improve survival from
sudden cardiac arrest (http://www.resuscitationacademy.org).
This intensive course, provided by the team at Seattle Medic One
Foundation, King County and Seattle Public Health, and the
University of Washington, animates concepts described in the text,
“improving cardiac arrest survival, one community at a time.”
Resuscitate! is wisely tailored for 21st century learners: for example,
chapter 10, “An Action Plan,” is also available as a free download
with embedded video and audio links as an iBook and available as a
free downloadable PDF document with audio links from the
Resuscitation Academy Web site.
Resuscitate! is a unique book and is the printed, physical
embodiment of an international movement to improve survival
from cardiac arrest. I heartily recommend you read it and commit
to improving cardiac arrest survival in your community.
Kevin G. Seaman, MD
Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue
Columbia, MD
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2013.07.007
Iserson’s Getting Into a Residency: A Guide for
Medical Students
Iserson KV
Galen Press
627 pages, $38.95
ISBN-10: 1883620368
ISBN-13: 978-1883620363
As an adviser for medical students applying to emergency
medicine residency programs, I have given plenty of advice on
the residency application process. I thought I had gleaned it
Volume 62, no. 5 : November 2013

through my own experiences as an applicant, discussions with
students, and conversations with residency faculty over the years,
but as I was reading Iserson’s Getting Into a Residency: A Guide for
Medical Students (8th edition) for this review, I realized that
much of what I knew came from having read the third edition of
this text while I was a third year medical student.
Now in its eighth edition, Getting Into a Residency covers a
broad range of topics, and many sections should ideally be
revisited numerous times, beginning the first year of medical
school. All of what you would expect to be in a book with this
title is included: choosing a specialty, researching programs
within that specialty, the application process, interview tips and
how the match works, and information on licensing
examinations, travel advice, and even restaurant etiquette! (“Cut
and take only one bite of food at a time and always use your
knife [not the fork] to cut your food.”). The “Special Situations”
chapter provides pointed advice for minority, physically
impaired, military, older applicants, and other applicants,
including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered; advice for
women and osteopathic applicants is also included in this
chapter. Several chapters and sections provide useful information
for international medical graduates. Because the book has nearly
doubled in length from the first edition, the author might
consider creating a separate version for US versus foreign
graduates.
Getting Into a Residency seems to meet its goal as practical
guide for medical students. Worksheets in the book include a
“Personal Trait Analysis” to assist the reader choosing a specialty
and a “Must/Want” analysis a method for sorting through the
morass of information an applicant collects about each program.
“Factors to Consider” (when choosing which programs to apply
to) is not just a list but also provides advice on how to find and
interpret this information from the Accreditation Council for
Graduate Medical Education, Fellowship and Residency
Volume 62, no. 5 : November 2013
View publication stats
Book and Media Reviews
Electronic Interactive Database, and program Web sites. The
interviewing section includes questions appropriate for faculty
versus questions to ask residents, as well as advice on how to
control the interview, how to explore potentially sensitive issues,
and questions not to ask. Examples of typical questions asked
during an interview come not just with examples of good answers
but also with explanations of what the interviewer is really asking.
Even those on the faculty side of the interview table might
benefit from rereading this section, or at least take home a few
ideas for new questions to ask during the interview season.
Unfortunately, because this text covers the general process of
residency application, some of the information may not apply
within a particular specialty. For example, in discussing letters
of recommendation, although he mentions the Emergency
Medicine Standardized Letter of Recommendation the author
states, “A few students have been asked to sign statements that
they have not seen their reference letters. This is ridiculous and
unenforceable. Don’t sign.” Despite being otherwise up to date
on the use of Electronic Residency Application Service and even
the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program, the section on
letters of recommendation also discusses having the letter writer
send letters directly to programs and does not mention that
applicants can control which letters are sent to which programs.
All in all, Getting Into a Residency continues to be an extremely
useful, information packed book that goes a long way toward
helping applicants through the often confusing process of
choosing and applying for residency.
Douglas S. Franzen, MD, MEd
Virginia Commonwealth University
Department of Emergency Medicine
Richmond, VA
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2013.06.075
Annals of Emergency Medicine 555