I’m in my sixth (6th!) year of residency, which I think qualifies me to have an opinion on what makes a good gift for the resident or soon-to-be resident in your life.
First off, here are good gift options that you probably already thought of so we can just move past them: Stoggles eye protection, Yeti mugs/Stanley cups, compression socks, nice pens, and bluetooth speakers. All great! But you don’t need me to explain.
Read on for my residency gift guide, which I am dividing into two broad categories: (1) practical gifts that are actually related to and useful for a resident’s professional life, and (2) things to nurture the humanness of your resident when they are outside the hospital.
Doing affiliate links was too complicated for me this year so you can trust my motivations are pure. If you are very determined to show your appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee :)
A call kit: get a high-quality toiletries bag (like I am lusting after this one) and fill it with a bunch of little treats to bring your resident joy or comfort during an overnight shift. Some nice mini skincare products. Fuzzy socks. A phone charger. A few tabs of tylenol/motrin/tums (believe it or not we don’t have access to these at work!!). Some fancy candy or mints. Singles for the vending machine. Dry shampoo. Mini toothbrush/toothpaste. A lil eye mask for trying to nap in a room with those motion sensor hospital lights that you can’t turn off. Tweezers! This is practical in the extreme but who doesn’t love a present that’s full of other presents.
Portable phone charger: residency is not a desk job (like, most residents don’t have their own desk to sit at even if they wanted to). We rest in the halls, in the SNACK-Us, we grab a moment of quiet in a poorly lit stairwell, enjoy a nice long pee in an under-trafficked single restroom. Our phones die frequently and we are rarely prepared for it!
Since we’re being practical I think Anker makes durable and affordable electronic products of all kinds and that’s what I’ve used. I’d go for one of these mag ones in the cute light blue color, but there are of course trillions of options and even if they already have one they would definitely like to have another. Not special enough? Spring for this one that looks like a tin of anchovies, I would LOVE to pull this out of my pocket in the hospital.
Heated vest: full disclosure, I’ve only seen these on my anesthesia colleagues but damn do I envy them. Especially if your resident does night float, we all experience the dreaded cortisol dips and spikes that come with irregularly irregular sleep. Give your resident the gift of temperature regulation.
UberEats/GrubHub gift card: All but the elitest of meal preppers among us struggle to feed ourselves in an economical yet soul-satisfying way while in draining (this was a Freudian slip of “training” but I decided to leave it lol). Food delivery is our collective guilty pleasure. Don’t judge. Enable us.
Sunrise alarm clock: Depending on where your resident is in the country, they are probably spending 30-50 percent of the year waking up in the dark and coming home in the dark. That is not great! Some of my co-residents swear by these sunrise alarm clocks to help them feel a little better and calmer getting up in the morning. I don’t personally have one, but here’s some well-curated suggestions.
Open-ear headphones: Most of our lives in the hospital alternate between periods of frenzied activity and then weird indeterminate chunks of downtime that we mostly spend charting and waiting for stuff. It’s tempting, during these times, to disappear into one’s pocket sensory deprivation tank aka your noise-canceling headphones. There is truly nothing like that magical moment when all of the hospital sound just dissolves into nothing. BUT. We shouldn’t do that. It’s not really safe or appropriate. We need to remain aware of our surroundings. Enter: open ear headphones! I swear by these Shokz ones and use them every day for my commute, for listening to podcasts while traversing enormous hospital buildings, and yes, to catch some discrete music when I have a huge pile of charts to work through. They say these are for sports, but lemme just say, being durable and waterproof and high-impact tolerant are what we need in the hospital too.
A bonus in-between category for the work-life balance integration crowd.
Mood lighting (to go!): one obvious choice for a resident gift is a portable speaker (great gift idea, but they probably already have one!). The speaker allows you to manage your space and your mood, and bring a little comfort to your charting time. The less obvious but I would argue just as impactful tool for mood management is lighting. The constant overhead fluorescents of the hospital are slowly driving us all mad. Overhead lighting is what I am most eager to escape at the end of a shift, and the first thing I do when I get home (sorry, husband!) is turn off all of the ceiling lights in favor of a few lamps. One of these lamps from the MoMA design store would be perfect (I’d pick the orange one) and it’s small enough you could even take it to the hospital with you for a slow call night. I also LOVE these orb-style lamps: they come in all kinds of sizes and types from lots of different sources, they are simple enough to fit with a wide range of decor, and will instantly change the mood of any space.
Luxurious lounge wear: While it’s true that most of us wear pajamas to work every day, we still all come home and want to immediately change into different pajamas. This is an excellent gifting target. I would recommend going extremely luxe on the materials like this gorgeous and well-priced cashmere sweatshirt with matching sweatpants from Quince. Alternatively, I love the idea of a set of sweats that look polished so you feel more like a fancy work-from-home person than a couch troll. Something from Varley or a Halo wideleg set from Vuori. The Brand Naadam (which is actually what I have) makes cashmere sets for men too…don’t act like the men don’t want to be nestled in a finely spun weave of hair from the world’s softest goat.
Theragun: you already know about these…seems like a good gift for somebody who is holding tension in their shoulders (aka all of us). I have (aka my husband has) a mini one and I love it.
Fancy drinking vessels: There’s nothing that makes me feel more like a grown up than drinking out of a nice container. Leave the mini soda cans, the styrofoam cups with bendy straws, and the sensible waterbottles at work and embrace drinking your home beverages out of something beautiful and breakable without any kind of waterproof lid. My favorite source is CB2: you literally cannot go wrong with anything on this page. My latest obsession are these Zero Japan coffee mugs that I bought in my favorite color (orange). I also have a collection of real nice vintage bar glasses and some colorful gold-rimmed coupes (the fanciest of fancy drinking vessels), so you could even thrift something for this one.
Special condiments: this is a category that I honestly did not appreciate before I became a resident. Having never made boxed mac and cheese in my life before intern year it is now constantly stocked in my house as an emergency backup meal. These are hard times! But I’ve learned that with a few magical condiments on hand, you can transform even the grimmest bowl of sad pasta or end-of-the-weak meal prepped beans and rice into something to spark joy. The king of this category—the magical fairy dust that livens up literally anything with a crack of sunshine—is Maldon Salt, and it comes in pretty tubs making it highly giftable, (especially if paired with a charming salt pig). I also love a high-quality, intensely flavorful finishing olive oil like Graza on everything from pasta to eggs to toast. My personal favorite condiment right now is an intense lemon oil that came in a tiny tin that a friend brought me back from Italy so I can’t give you a link to it. I also have a stash of interesting vinegars/soy sauces/crispy toppings and I-don’t-know-whats from our local asian grocery store, which I use to level up one of my favorite weeknight meals, “rice with stuff on it.” You cant go wrong with the spice mixes from Burlap and Barrel. Honestly though just go to that cute lil cooking store in your neighborhood and buy that fancy aged balsamic, that tube of multi-colored peppercorns, the bougier the better!
That’s it! Have you given or received an excellent resident gift??? Please tell me about it I’m very curious, either comment here or send me a DM on any of that platforms :)
Not to be a grinch, but as a lil coda I’d like to address what’s NOT a good residency gift: anything cutesy celebrating doctory-ness. I’m talking dish towels with EKG tracings on them, signs or mugs that say “the doctor is in!,” whatever a stethoscope charm is (??) really anything that comes up when you google “gifts for residents.” Remember that residents are grown-ass adults, most of them nearly at or recently past the age of 30, working around 80 hours a week for less than minimum wage. It’s just not that cute! Also be careful of any gift that creates a commitment…a gift card to a massage place that is hard to schedule at, a weekend getaway, a cooking class. We want these things, but our capacity for planning is limited <3
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.