Basic items every resident and 3rd and 4th year medical student needs to be prepared and fly.
the watch
Your watch will make you look and feel a little more put together when you roll out of bed and come straight to work. It's also helpful for checking heart and respiratory rates. Oh yeah, and counting how many hours you've been rounding (I will not miss rounding for hours!).
HERS
I personally own a gold Tory Burch watch, hence the major bias in the following listing. It's a pricey buy, but it's also not a rolex. It's casual enough to be an everyday watch, but it also dresses up very well. The Daniel Wellington is very on-trend right now and is much cheaper! I recommend against faceless watches unless you really know how to tell time (it's a rare ability in this digital age..at least that's what I tell myself).
HIS
the fitness tracker: hers and his
10,000 steps. everyday. Of course, you can combine your fitness tracker with your watch (my ugly apple watch has pretty much replaced my beautiful Tory Burch watch). It's really easy to get lazy during residency. For instance, I only took the stairs for the first 3 months of residency. By the second half of residency, I was taking the elevator for one floor with no shame. A fitness tracker will help you keep track of these slow behavioral changes and hopefully encourage you to stay active. In our emergency department, everyone on staff had a fitness tracker and they would discuss their steps everyday. If you're competitive by nature, find a group to keep you accountable! I discuss how I chose the apple watch a little in this post, but it basically came down to "might as well get an apple watch if I'm going to get a fitness tracker since I have an iphone".
