Q & A with Associate Chief Resident Dr. Monica Reddy
Q1: Tell us about yourself, including your decision to stay at UNC for fellowship (we’re thrilled you are).
A1: I grew up in Oklahoma and Texas, but I consider myself an Oklahoman at heart. I completed my undergraduate work at the University of Oklahoma, and then matriculated at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine for medical school. For residency, I felt it was important to leave my home state and broaden my experiences. I grew up spending every summer with my great grandparents on the Outer Banks, so North Carolina has always had my heart and I felt this was the perfect residency program for me. I will be continuing my education at UNC as a Breast/Body fellow for 2019-2020. I chose to stay at UNC because of the supportive family atmosphere, the variety of pathology, and the strength of the education.
Q2: And your chief’s portfolio?
A2: As an associate chief resident, my primary responsibility is resident recruitment, which I discuss more in detail below. I am fortunate to work alongside my amazing co-chiefs Dr. Bryan Ashley and Dr. Josh Wallace, and we try to approach most things as a team. Surprisingly, the chiefs’ workload is enough to keep the three of us quite busy.
Q3: Tell us more about your lead role in residency recruitment – strong work by the way!
A3: As a medical student I was selected as a student ambassador for the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, which involved potential student recruitment and leading interview tours. As a fourth year medical student I was part of the medical school interview committee. My interest in the resident recruitment process began when I was an intern, and I attended many of the interview dinners and toured potential students around our campus. As a local, I was able to offer a lot of information and advice about the area to applicants from all over the country.
When I joined the residency program at UNC, I felt that there were many things about the interview day that could be improved. I brought my knowledge from having been a recent applicant and helped to totally revamp the interview day schedule. We also changed the pre-interview dinner locations and made them much more casual and similar to our normal resident social events. Because of all these favorable changes, we were able to greatly increase the resident participation and interest in recruitment. The residents became more personally invested in making our program better. All of these changes lead to our incredible successes during the past four residency recruitment seasons. The current R2 and R1 classes are the first two years I was involved in recruitment, so it’s wonderful to see all your hard work pay off in the form of a successful residency program.
Q4: In 2 years our residency ranking has made a leap to #32 in diagnostic radiology rankings (before any concerted effort on our part to boost our scores). Care to predict where we’ll be in two to three more years?
A4: Top 25
PHOTO (L to R): Drs. Josh Wallace, Monica Reddy Brian Ashley, Kaleigh Burke