Sewing cheeze

when i was interviewing (i am a pgy3) i remember the following places
wash u - read trauma xray (mine was a anterior hip dislocation)
u of MO - draw a cross section of the calf
akron - asked if i could be any animal what would it be and why
somewhere also asked what three people in history i would eat dinner with if i could choose (i dont remember what I said, but it did catch me off guard)

Will someone behind the scenes please tell me how this kind of nonsense has any reflection of our performance in residency?????

What they heck are they looking for?

If we all have 235+ board scores, nice grades, etc- don't they think we'll learn enough by the time we hit PGY2?

How does sewing cheese, playing 'Operation', reading x-rays, and pimping us on anatomy have any reflection of our capabilities in residency??- especially when some of us have been spending the last 16 weeks doing cards, peds, psych, and medicine rotation- nothing to do with ortho right now, trying to get grad requirements in... oh and studying for step 2.

I plan to do a damn good job in residency, and pimping me anatomy minutiae while I'm focusing on treating CHF patients right now, has little reflection on my future capabilities. Most of us aced anatomy, the boards, and the surgery clerkship, is this not sufficient?

I think that goes for most of us.

If these programs are seriously judging us on our ortho knowledge right now, they are losing out on applicants who will do an outstanding job in residency.

Interviewed at WashU this year where I was asked to interpret a pelvic radiograph (right acetabular fracture). Seemed like the interviewers were looking more at your approach to interpreting the film i.e identify what type of film, quality, etc etc before looking for pathology and diagnosis. After interpreting the film, the interviewers gave me a model of the pelvis and had me delineate the fracture line. I was not explicitly pimped on anatomy (although anatomy knowledge is implicit in interpreting the radiograph and localizing the pathology) or asked to classify a fracture or give different treatment choices. I thought this was fair as most of us at this point should at least know the overall approach to reading a radiograph and noting the most obvious pathology i.e "that just doesn't look right".

Some of the other things people have listed seem pretty ridiculous. Suturing cheese? critique art? assessing ability to multitask? classification of fractures? If I wanted to suture cheese, I would have chosen a career in the dairy industry, would have become an artist to critique art. We've all made it through med school and in general have done much better than the "average" medical student so we sure as hell know how to multitask. How about being in rotations, finding funding for interviews, making airport and hotel reservations, finding someone to take call for you while you're away on interviews and all the other crap you need to do just to go on a few interviews? I will admit that right now I don't even know how to classify most of the everyday bread and butter fractures. Will someone please remind me again of why I'm applying for an orthopaedic residency?
In this sense, I agree with Cain. Most of us are hard working people. We've done well in med school (clerkships, boards, etc) and are determined to do well in residency. I don't understand how most of these 2 minute dexterity tasks will reflect on our performance in residency.

Quick Cain, answer this question:

Why did they choose round as the shape for manhole covers?

Serious question. I got it once.