Away Rotations in a Specialty

[nascardoc]

According to my school's handbook, we can only rotate thru one specialty once per year, when using our electives. The language from the handbook is as follows: : "Electives shall not consist of the same specialty or same physician for two consecutive or separate months."

So, if I am interested in EM, I can only use one elective for EM during 4th year, thus I have only 1 audition rotation for a program, out of a few I may be interested in. Is this policy at other schools as well, or just here? If its different, how so?

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[DrMidlife]

It's the same at Nova, and I fail to see what good it does. My understanding is that we get around it by doing "sub" specialties - for EM, you'd look for things like trauma, critical care, toxicology, peds EM, etc. Anything where you're close enough to make a daily impression on the EM docs, where the EM docs are supervising you, theoretically gets the job done. Talk to upper classmen, and try to find students at the host institution who can provide insights.

Definitely look through schools' lists of rotations, and you'll see that in any department there are multiple options for electives. Also read the requirements carefully - you'll want to pay attention to the list of core rotations we're expected to complete before doing electives. You might need to jigger your 3rd year schedule...

Best of luck to you, and please post as you find out more.

 

[Amy B]

I would ask your school. At VCOM we could do more than one in the area we were interested in as 4th year electives.

If it is not possible, than get an elective at that hospital, make sure they know this is an audition rotation, and go to the department you are interested in and talk with them, visit, ask to follow someone around and your down time, etc....... The departments do talk to each other.

 

[ceftazidime]

At Nova it's actually 2 months... but I'm a current 4th year so I don't know if they plan on changing it (I don't see why they would, it's never been an issue). But as DrMidlife said, you just pick subspecialties that fall into the category of EM, of which there are plenty.

 

[scpod]

....Is this policy at other schools as well, or just here? If its different, how so?

All of our electives can be done in any field and in any place you wish. That's one of the reasons I picked Lecom-B over Nova-- oh and the 3 months of rural rotations Nova makes you do in the fourth year, too. I've heard of quite a few schools, however, who limit your "electives" in one field. But, like many others have said, there are ways around it. I know you don't have any upper classmen to talk it over with, but I've rotated with some Nova students who have gotten around it. You might PM some of them.

 

[Jamers]

According to my school's handbook, we can only rotate thru one specialty once per year, when using our electives. The language from the handbook is as follows: : "Electives shall not consist of the same specialty or same physician for two consecutive or separate months."

So, if I am interested in EM, I can only use one elective for EM during 4th year, thus I have only 1 audition rotation for a program, out of a few I may be interested in. Is this policy at other schools as well, or just here? If its different, how so?

DMU we can only do 3 months at one type of rotation. Random question, how does one go about doing an audition rotation?

 

[HarveyCushing]

At KCUMB during our 4th year we have 4 months of electives and 2 months of sub-i's available. I believe just like DMU, we can only do 3 months in one particular specialty. There are easy ways around this. If you really enjoy radiology you can do 3 standard months of general radiology, and then another 1-2 months of interventional radiology, neuro-radiology, peds radiology....etc. One reason why I picked KCUMB was for the extensive amount of elective time during 4th to make my own schedule. We only have 3 months of required rotations. I think that is how 4th year should be.