For those of you who are still waiting for the secondary, the prompts are already posted in this thread, and you can start working on the questions now. Case is a non-screening school, which means you will all receive the secondary, no exceptions. So no need to wait until you actually receive the secondary. Just start writing the essays.
Speaking of essays....
What were your favorite/least favorite rotations, where, and why?
Ok, favorite rotation of third year would have to be family medicine. It was my first, so it was kind of scary, but I liked the variety of it. I also liked that there wasn't a lot of downtime like there typically is in inpatient rotations, and the hours were pretty benign. (No weekends, no call.) You get to see a little of everything, do a little patient counseling, a few procedures. Even during my rotation, I had a couple of patients come for follow-up visits, so I was able to build up a rapport with them. I liked that longitudinal aspect of it. Plus, the docs are nice and most of the patients are healthy.
Least favorite is easy: OB/gyn. To paraphrase a very wise resident I know, there is a reason why the TV show "Survivor" has never had an episode with almost all women in it, and 'nuff said about that.
I also don't find women's health to be particularly interesting or enjoyable, either to learn about or to practice, and I don't particularly like babies. Crying newborns sound a lot like sheep bleating, and once one gets going, the whole nursery-full starts. I don't know how people can stand to listen to that all day. The first delivery I assisted with ended with the patient having a fourth degree laceration (extending from the vagina clear through to the anus), which was incredibly traumatic to watch happen. Her entire nether regions looked like raw hamburger, and I have no idea how the attending figured out what to suture together. (I actually asked, and she laughed and said you get to know after a while. But I secretly suspect that she just started suturing some tissue together randomly.) The gyn part was pretty similar to surgery, only with less variety in procedures. I liked that better than the OB.
I did both of those rotations at CCF, and I did other rotations at the VA and UH. I don't think it would have made my OB/gyn experience better if I had done it somewhere else. The Case students consistently rank that rotation the lowest at all three of the main sites. Plus, I think OB is just one of those fields that you either love or you hate. Like I said, it's really not my thing.
