What Kind of Physician Will You Be?
Variation in Health Care and Its Importance for Residency Training
October 30, 2012
Anita Arora, MD, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Class of 2012,
Alicia True, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Class of 2015,
and the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care
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We look to you, as medical students nearing graduation, to help transform the quality and value of medical care. Your choice in a residency program will shape your care for patients for years to come and can also present opportunities to lead improvements in health care. Surely, this is one of the most important decisions you will make in your career.
Residency program reputation, location, and training curriculum are obviously major factors in your ranking of programs. It is also important to know that each teaching hospital has its own style and culture of practice that represents a hidden training curriculum. This Dartmouth Atlas report will help you understand these less visible hospital characteristics that can have profound effects on how you care for patients.
The report first provides background on health care variation and then presents information about specific teaching hospitals. (Information for nearly all teaching hospitals can also be found at this web site.) When you read the report, we would encourage you to consider the current problems and future opportunities in health care, and how your training can help you become a leader in tomorrow's health care system.
With very best wishes to our future physicians,
Wiley "Chip" Souba, MD, ScD, MBA
Vice-President for Health Affairs at Dartmouth College and Dean of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
John E. Wennberg, MD, MPH
Founder and Director Emeritus of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice
David C. Goodman, MD, MS
Director of the Center for Health Policy Research, The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice