The people who stay with you

Every July, the hallways fill with new faces. Every June, many of them leave. If you've worked in GME for any length of time, you know this rhythm by heart. I've been part of it for about twenty years, and it still catches me off guard.

Here's what I've come to believe. Almost everything in our work turns over. Fellows graduate. Faculty move on. Program directors step down, and requirements get rewritten. What lasts is the people we choose to stay connected to.

That connection rarely happens by accident. Our calendars belong to everyone else. We spend our days making sure other people get where they need to go. Building relationships of our own can feel like a luxury we'll get to after the next deadline. Then the next deadline arrives.

What lasting connection looks like

In my experience, the relationships that hold up over years share a few traits.

They start small. A two-line note after someone survives a hard site visit. A message to a new administrator that says, "Here's what I wish someone had told me in my first month." Small gestures add up faster than we expect.

They go both ways. The colleagues I still call years later are the ones who called me back. Connection that only flows in one direction is support, and support matters. It rarely lasts on its own.

They cross roles. Some of my most valuable relationships are with program directors, faculty, and former fellows. When we see each other as partners instead of as links in a task chain, the work gets better and so does the day.

They cross institutions. A peer at another program often sees your problem more clearly than someone down the hall. They don't share your politics. They just share your experience.

Isolation is a quiet risk

Many GME professionals work as the only person in their role within a department. You can be surrounded by people all day and still feel alone in the work. That kind of isolation never shows up on a dashboard, but it wears people down.

Treat connection as part of your well-being, not an extra. This month, try one thing: reach out to one colleague you've lost touch with. No agenda. Just ask how they're doing.

Connection is part of the work, not a reward for finishing it.

Onboarding is the first connection

How we welcome new people tells them whether they belong. A binder and a login set someone up to function. A named person who checks in during week one, week four, and month three sets them up to stay. If your office doesn't build a peer contact into onboarding, that's a good place to start.

Relationships protect programs, too

There's an operational side to all of this. When institutional knowledge lives in one person's head, the program carries risk. Relationships spread that knowledge around. An administrator who has a trusted peer to call before a site visit, or a colleague who knows where the program letters of agreement live, makes the whole program more resilient.

Good documentation does the same thing on paper. You need both.

The people stay

The work will keep turning over. That's the nature of training. The people, though, can stay with you for a whole career if you make room for them.

Who's someone in GME you're glad you stayed connected to? Tell me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear your story.