Advice for New Rheumatology Fellows: Construct Winner’s Triangles

Luckily, rheumatologists do not enjoy simplicity. We revel in the complexity of the immune system’s interactions. The complexities of ligand-receptor relationships are never far from our minds, and we navigate the dangerous, narrow channels of prior authorization daily. Embracing that complexity when it comes to our interpersonal relationships may be the greatest lesson that we can learn from our rheumatology fellowship training.

Winner’s triangles can be deceptive, in that they may seem easy to construct and to dissect, but in real life, they are difficult to generate and sustain. We all have coaches, creators and challengers in our lives, and we are often each of those people. But aligning these people in these roles to mutually empower one another is difficult.

June is a bittersweet month. It’s the last month of stability and certainty in the academic calendar before all the change forces scramble many of our professional relationships once again. But that scrambling is not necessarily a bad thing. We can draw upon our strengths to construct winner’s triangles in the world around us. We can welcome the next crop of rheumatologists into a specialty that coaches, creates and challenges one another for the benefit of our patients. June 2024 will come and go in a blink of an eye. So too will the entirety of fellowship. But, with some dedication, the relationships that enable you to win will sustain themselves forevermore.

Bharat Kumar, MD, MME, FACP, FAAAAI, RhMSUS, is the director of the rheumatology fellowship training program at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and the physician editor of The Rheumatologist. Follow him on X @BharatKumarMD.

References

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