Greetings from Baltimore! My name is Brad Cotter. I am from Avon, Connecticut, a wonderfully sleepy suburb that lies just in the middle of the force field of hate between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Luckily, the folks are from north of Boston originally so I was brought up with Fenway as my second home and learned to scoff at all those New Yorkers who call Manhattan The city.
I came to medicine after studying chemical and biomolecular engineering at Hopkins and discovering that I preferred talking with the people I was trying to help rather than being cooped up in a lab. Anyone who has been in an ED knows that you could not have run any further in the other direction in finding a work environment. I play guitar and drums, and in another life played in two bands in Baltimore.
I have loved my first few months here at UMD. The most important part in picking a residency is finding a place and a group of people that you will enjoy spending these 3-5 incredibly important years of your life with. I have been thrilled with how close our intern class has become in such a short time. We get together every Wednesday night for dinner and drinks and a weekly decompression of the constant struggle that is intern year. Very necessary.
Reasons why the program at UMD is awesome. First, look at the landscape of social media in medical education. Emergency medicine is pioneering the use of podcasts, websites and FOAM (free online access meducation) as new platforms for learning. If you have not discovered the number of amazing podcasts out there, go do it! Dr. Mallemat, Dr. Mattu, Dr. Rogers, and Dr. Winters are the founding fathers in this wave of technology in medical education and we get to learn from them here! If you have not heard of these guys yet, you will.
Second, having already spent four years at Hopkins I was well aware of the diverse and vibrant community of Baltimore. It is a city of incredible character, with a significant proportion of the population that is impoverished, in need, and appreciative of medical care. And with this need comes the opportunity to learn from a broad spectrum of disease pathology that you can find in few other places in the world.
I could go on for a while. Come to MD and check us out. Feel free to e-mail me through the link, I am happy to help in the process.
Critical Care
ED Ultrasound
Risk Management
Law in medicine
ED Operations/Process management
