PGY-2 Retreats are all-day events held at the program director Dr. Ryan Kraemer's home. These retreats are great opportunities for PGY-2 residents to learn about leadership styles, teamwork, giving feedback, and the challenges of the PGY-2 year. 

Dr. Kraemer's home provides a casual environment for residents to develop their leadership and communication skills through workshops, personal reflection and open dialogue. With interactive discussion, residents can discover their "leadership personalities" and learn how to incorporate these personalities into their new PGY-2 role. Other sessions emphasize the importance of teamwork and communication in making patient care decisions. 

One example is an exercise involving the creation of a rank list of survival items, imagining you are stranded in Space. After developing their lists, residents break into groups to complete the same task, with the goal of agreeing on a final list of which items are most important to survive. After much heated debate and laughter, residents would then reunite to score themselves individually and as teams. Interestingly, only one individual will score higher than their team, demonstrating the power of teamwork and group discussion in making decisions.

These retreats are filled with learning and reflection, but also provide an atmosphere of camaraderie between co-residents and faculty members.