Welcome

On behalf of the Office of Student Affairs, thank you very much for registering as a mentor in our Virtual Advisor network. We are thrilled to have you on board and appreciate your willingness to work with our students.

We created the Virtual Advisor program to help support students as they explore career options. We hope that through this network, students are able to contact you for information on clinical practice. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Virtual Advisor Team at virtualadvisor@mednet.ucla.edu or via telephone at (310) 267-1104.

Thank you,

Neil H. Parker, M.D. Sr. Associate Dean for Student Affairs David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Advisor Overview

• Become An Advisor
• Manage My Profile
• Guidelines and Responsibilities
• Links and Resources
• What to expect: FAQs from our students

Guidelines and Responsibilities

Advisors must have completed a residency program and be licensed to practice medicine in the US.

Advisors should be affiliated with UCLA as graduates of the medical school, former housestaff or appointed faculty.

Advisors should respond to communications from their advisee(s) in a timely manner (within two weeks unless the advisor is out of town). It is the student's responsibility to initiate contact after a match, but advisors are encouraged to follow up with an unresponsive student.

Virtual advising is intended to be professional. Please do not give out information that would not be appropriate in a public forum. Confidential discussions should be conducted over the telephone or in person.

Participants in Virtual Advisor are responsible for updating their profile. Annual notices will prompt you to update your information and release any inactive advisees.

The Student Affairs Office advises students on the mechanics of the matching process. Because this process and the regulations governing it are constantly changing, we ask that advisors keep this in mind when giving out advice about the matching process. We welcome advisors to give out specialty-specific advice about programs if this is relevant to their role as an advisor.

Virtual Advisor is for information purposes only. The program does not intend to match students with residency programs, and Virtual Advisors are not held responsible for a given student's eventual match result.

Unprofessional conduct may be reported to the Student Affairs Office.

Advisors that participate in Virtual Advisor may be contacted in the future for purposes of quality improvement and overall assessment of the program.

 

Links and Resources

The Career Advising pages of the David Geffen School of Medicine, Office of Student Affairs, contain a wealth of online resources.

 

What to expect: FAQs from our students

What made you decide to pursue your specialty?

Do you have any regrets about your career choice?

Did you change your mind when choosing your specialty?

How has your specialty changed since you started? What changes do you forsee in the future?

How important is research to your practice? To your specialty?

What is your average day like? Do you work more or less than you thought you would?

Are you happy in your specialty? Would you have been happy in another specialty?

What things do you dislike about your specialty?

Has the 80 hour work week affected training in your specialty?

What are the after-hours expectations of your practice? Do you participate in conferences, CME, reading papers, journal clubs, etc?

Are there any regional or national organizations that you recommend joining to learn more about your specialty?

Are there opportunities to participate in medical missions here in the US and abroad in the specialty and practice that you have chosen?