Usually, emergency medicine residents fend off recruiters hoping to hire them. This year, they’re barely getting calls back. Here’s how COVID-19 has upended EM job prospects — and what these young doctors worry they may need to do instead.

Emergency medicine (EM) resident Rafay Khan, DO, faced an onslaught of COVID-19 patients when he worked in the intensive care unit at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in December and January. He was constantly intubating patients, dashing to crises, and having to share devastating news with families. “Imagine explaining to a wife in her 30s that her husband just died,” he says. “It was excruciating and exhausting.”

But when Khan went home, he didn’t rest much. Instead, he would turn to his quest to find a job for when he graduates this spring. He would spend hours scouring online jobsites, reaching out to recruiters, cold-calling employers, and contacting alumni, attendings, and anyone else he thought could help.

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