Dr. Gina Badalato
speaker
35 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Oct 2024
Dr. Gina Badalato’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Hi, my name is Gina Bottolato. I am a urologist at Columbia University in New York, normally the host of this podcast with Lindsay, but happy to surrender the reins to Yash today. Great to see everybody.
Yeah, I agree with Mahir that it's very similar to in-person in terms of the content and the principles of interviewing. In fact, some programs are doing hybrid where some candidates are being interviewed virtually and others in person. And every effort should be made to kind of standardize that process in terms of the actual questions and evaluation process.
But I do think in-person lens, you know, kind of a different flavor. Your kind of collisions with your peers in the hallway or in a waiting area or on a tour are different. And I think, you know, you should really capitalize on those casual interactions with other residents and your other colleagues who are interviewing.
coordinators anyone else kind of making the day possible so some of those intangibles that arguably are part of program culture are more palpable during the in-person interview enjoy the culture of the city that you're visiting appreciate the setting of the hospital so it really is a is an opportunity for you to gather more data and you can ask specific questions about that obviously they're asking you there for a reason maybe to show you a little bit more about
the culture of their department in person or the city itself. So ask questions about that and be observant about that. Great. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, you know, when we review applications initially, you're looking for someone's qualifications. And then by the time you get to the interview, you're beyond that. Everybody interviewing is qualified. They're going to make excellent urologists. But it's really, would they be happy training at this particular program?
Do they have kind of the skills to thrive in this particular program? Would they bring something different? Would they complement or enhance the residency in some way? So you're really looking for how they would fit in that program. and whether it would be a mutual fit. So I think that's what you're looking for.
And a lot of the questions are geared towards kind of values that the program might have sometimes, you know, towards, is it community service? Is it certain skills that they have, multitasking or communication skills? So you're really looking beyond the qualifications and looking at who they are as people, and if this is a place that they could thrive. And your ability to click with somebody.
This is somebody that you're going to spend five to six years with, who's going to be calling you in the middle of the night, you know, and maybe working with you under incredibly stressful circumstances as a resident, as an attending in the OR. And you want to be able to trust that person, look that person in the eye and say, you know what, I really...
would like to work with you and feel that mutual kind of relationship with somebody.
Yeah, I think that that's a great question. I just want to reiterate some of what Lindsay said about anticipating common questions. You know, like you're going to be asked, tell us about yourself or to summarize your application in a couple of lines. That should be like an elevator pitch that should not last for more than one or two minutes.
And common pitfall is just to get bogged down with that question and spend too much time on that so you don't get to some of these other more program specific questions that's meant to be an icebreaker. So really kind of mastering those quicker turnaround questions about summarizing your questions. You know, your path to urology, all the other stuff that should really be at your fingertips.
So then when you're looking at a specific program, I think websites are helpful. Social media X tends to be a little bit more updated on a day to day basis than the website sometimes are not as updated since they're more cumbersome to do that.
If you have any faculty alumni among your mentorship or mentor circles or home institutions or visiting institutions from that place, you can touch base with them. That could be a resident, a medical student or faculty alumni. You could do a PubMed search of some of the prominent faculty in that department. So those are all potential sources of information. And, you know, if there's any...
Anything like unique that that program has, unique to that city, a particular program, a research year, you should really be prepared to ask questions about how someone spends time during their research year, support during their research year, anything unique about that program to know those kind of details. And then you should also just know your application code.
So preparing is not just knowing the place, but also to know your application. Anything is fair game on your application, including... You know, a paper that you worked on a couple years ago, you might get asked about it. So you want to know, you want to like review some everything that you put on there. If you put a hobby, think about the last time you did that hobby or any insights you have.
If you write that you like to read as your hobby, what was the last thing that you read? Because you could be asked about those things. And so those are some general tips to prepare, but also just to be yourself. That's why I think preparing for those intro questions are helpful because they're icebreakers. And if you can get through that, you just get calmer.
You'd like an easy kind of pitch and then you can answer some of the more challenging questions that might come up later with more confidence.
Yeah, some of these questions have to do with like situational awareness or ability to function in the team or ability to multitask or triage. These are all like essential skills in residency, organizational skills. You know, not every program is going to ask these type of questions. You may have a clear track.
This is why Lindsay was talking about understanding the why, understanding the challenges, because that clearly is more of a testament to your ability to master these skills in any one of these fields. these situational questions. But I would really listen to the question, take a minute to think about it.
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