Questions:
1. What's your typical day-to-day schedule in years 1 and 2?
2. Can M3 and M4 be spent exclusively in LV or are there some rotations you have to do in Reno?
3. What research areas are available to UNSOM students?
4. What do UNSOM students typically do between M1 and M2? Are research fellowships available?
5. What's the UNR campus like (I'm from LV)?
6. How're the academics? Typically lecture-style? Difficulty?
7. Do you do anything "hands on" in M1/M2?
8. From what M3 and M4s may have told you, what level of responsibility are med students given on their rotations at UNSOM?
Thanks!
1. Year one class in the morning, labs in the afternoon. IPC and CPS (introduction to patient care and clinical problem solving) in the afternoons as well, but you're almost always 5 days a week. Exam almost every two weeks about a month in and doesn't stop until you finish in May with the exception of the Christmas break. Exams aren't crazy hard but it'll be a huge crash and burn for almost everyone at first while they adjust to the amount of material. In IPC the spring semester you're matched with a doctor in the community in either IM, Peds, OB/Gyn, or Family and you see patients, on your own if you're comfortable.
Year two, class Mon-Fri in the AM. Lab once a week, usually class monday afternoon, rarely class Friday afternoon, preceptor (IPC II) once a week. Obviously a lot more responsibility and the expectation that you absolutely can see patients on your own and do H&Ps as well as develop assessments and plans with a decent differential. Exams are once a month typically and you only have two real classes at a time, but the volume on each exam is horrifying. Year one you can get away with not studying every day if you're really bright, year two if you don't study every single day (2-3 hours outside of class minimum) you'll fail.
2. Its possible and usually accomodating that you can spend all of 3 and 4 in LV if you choose, but there is a chance that all of the available spots are taken and they send you back to Reno for a rotation or two. The only mandatory rotations however are in Las Vegas (Surgery and OB)
3. The basic sciences exclusively unless you take a year or more off between years 2 and 3, in which case we have pretty extensive partnerships with UC Davis and you can do an applied research masters and possibly a PhD if you're interested. There are a lot of high profile muscle research labs at Nevada, and a lot of cell physiology labs. There are some clinical research options in Las Vegas on your summer between 1-2.
4. About 1/3 of the class goes to Nicaragua for a community medicine trip where they do hands on medicine in remote places. A lot of crazy stuff happens on that trip like surgeries on kitchen tables and home births that students get to perform. They've got some stories.
Otherwise the rest of us either do research, summer preceptorships in specialities we're interested in, or take the summer off. The research doesn't have to be at UNSOM, there are tons of opportunities for 6-8-12 week study projects across the country that are available. The preceptorships can be in LV or Reno and accomodate almost every specialty and sub specialty. I was already established in a lab here so I did 6 weeks of research and then four weeks of a preceptorship in pediatric surgery (which was mind blowing).
5. UNLV's campus blows compared to UNRs, and the medical school just built us a huge new building strictly for year 1-2 education.
6. Nevada isn't a bottom of the rung school, and typically 3-10 of the sixty students match in places like Mayo or John Hopkin's from each class. You get into it what you put into it, I can't really explain it any better than that. As far as difficulty goes, if you took 2nd semester O-chem over the summer at UNLV with Bhowmik (or know someone who has and carries the horror stories) its like that x20. Or, put practically, imagine your the hardest class you've ever taken and pretend that was a high school AP class. The jump in difficulty you experienced from high school to your hardest class in college is about the jump in difficulty you get from college to medical school. A large part of that is volume, but a lot is also level of detail which is beyond anything you've ever done.
Some lectures are worth while, some aren't. I didn't go to class almost my entire second semester and got Bs. Studying from the text book works for me, but take that with a grain of salt. Some stuff is mandatory, a lot isn't. All of the gunners go to every class and have no lives though.
7. Yes, IPC is about as hands on as you can get as long as your interest isn't surgery or psych. In your summer you can get very, very hands on. I scrubbed in on every pediatric surgery the city of Reno had (since I was with the only pediatric surgeon in 300 miles) and when you've felt a two week old heart beat in your hand and cut out the lung of a four month old baby, you definitely know it doesn't get any better than that. That was year 1-2 summer. In year 2, in my family preceptorship, I see about 6-12 patients each week. We also have the SOC (student outreach clinic) which is run entirely by students and mediated very lightly by doctors. We do everything there and serve patients who have no insurance, 3-4 times a month.
8. Depends on the rotation and the particular doctor. Some rotations (like peds in Reno) you spend the entire time at the hospital and you manage an entire wing, writing notes and giving orders, which are all double checked by the resident. In surgery obviously you'll scrub in and assist but you don't cut. I don't know of any rotations where you aren't actively seeing patients solo every single time before the doc or resident sees them though.
If there's any thing else or anything you'd like me to go into a little more detail on, let me know.
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