The first residency program was established in 1889 by Dr. William Osler at Johns Hopkins Hospital where staff doctors lived in the hospital and trained for many years.
In the current day, resident physicians or “residents” train in a chosen specialty for a set number of years before graduating and practicing medicine on their own. Residents are not students anymore, they are doctors in training. The process is grueling, demanding, and accompanied by long hours. However, this is not without reason. Young doctors must learn everything about their specialty and be exposed to as much as possible to be the best they can be.
Hospitals with residency programs are known as teaching hospitals and are often the centers of excellence with the best outcomes. For a patient, receiving care from a resident does not mean the care is lesser quality or that they are “a guinea pig” being used as practice. All residency programs are structured with supervision from an attending physician with scaled levels of autonomy. Attending physicians are fully licensed doctors that have already completed residency training. This has been the system to train the world’s best doctors since the 1890’s.
Roger Yau MD 