As I progress through my training, I see more clearly how I benefited from my intern year; my comfort with ventilator settings and ability to navigate goals-of-care discussions are a direct result of my pandemic cases. However, when I am asked how my residency has been, I am haunted by the memories of those who can no longer answer.

Michelle I. Suh, a second-year resident in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, reflects on how her intern year was shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The essay read in this episode was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the September 2022 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.