Best order to do rotations in?

[alisepeep]

What is the best order to do core rotations in? Should one try to start with elective, vacation? Or get the difficult rotations out of the way? At what point should we schedule the rotations that we are actually interested in?

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[PTPoeny]

Schedule the rotations that you are interested in not first and before you make your fourth year schedule. Other than that it varies by person and by school.

Some things to consider:
How much weight does your school put on the shelf exams? When do you plan on taking step 2 during fourth year? Do you have trouble going back to working hard after an easy bit? Or do you do better alternating harder and easier work loads?

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

My strategy was to schedule outpatient rotations I wasn't interested in for residency (e.g. psychiatry) first, followed by inpatient rotations I wasn't interested in (e.g. Ob/gyn). Then the rotations I'm interested in, interspersed by easier outpatient rotations (e.g. FM) and electives. I left surgery for last (probably for cowardly reasons).

 

[tco]

1st - Something that you don't care about

After that, I think it should be more a set of rules that guide you rather than a strict schedule. Here, we have first come first serve online third year scheduling, so it's a mad dash to get everything in before everyone else. I said, "I don't want IM first, I want IM before surgery, and I don't want surgery last." Pretty much other than that, I was happy. Other preferences were that I wanted IM and surgery before winter break so that I could think about what I wanted to do with my life and also prepare for step 2 without worrying about the two toughest rotations. I also didn't want Peds during the winter.

My schedule ended up as follows:
FM - IM- Surg - Break - Psych/Neuro - OB/GYN - Peds

 

[yuiness]

At my school, most people seem to like to do IM as early as possible. I ended up managing to get IM first and thought it worked out well to get a chance to do the whole generalized H&P first before learning to abbreviate/focus on certain parts in the other rotations (my school does not require a FM rotation).

 

[fastnfurious]

I don't think the order really matters, but if I had to give general advice I would say to start with a rotation that you do not care about first. Generally, the physicians give you a break on the first rotation but you still might get docked for not being as clinically knowledgeable as a previous group.

I did family med first and that was beneficial because it was so broad that I got exposure to multiple fields (peds, medicine, and some OB)

 

[Kaputt]

Any order will do. Whatever order you end up getting you'll justify to yourself as the best anyway. But here's my idea:

Schedule a hard rotation that you're less interested in first. Like OB/Gyn or surgery (if you don't want to do either of those). Follow it up with an easier rotation like psych or family med to catch your breath. Then back to the inpatient ones like peds and IM. Ideally, do the thing you want to do for residency in the middle probably, so you're not a newbie and you're not burnt out.

But like I said, you'll survive and thrive with any schedule layout.

 

[Bbon]

I had IM first (not by choice), and I plan on probably going into IM.

Pros: Great foundation for every other rotation, decent overlap with Step 1 knowledge/MS 2 material so you don't feel completely lost and can actually formulate a semblance of a differential on your patients early on

Cons: Your first rotation has the steepest learning curve, and if you do want to go into IM, it's not necessarily ideal to have to work those out during the rotation. That being said, after a bumpy first 10 days or so, I got the hang of it and impressed my attendings enough to do well. I think it's not a big deal what order you get.

I have family medicine last, which I think is nice since it encompasses material from a lot of specialities, so my studying will hopefully overlap with step 2 studying. That's the plan at least.

 

[DrGERD]

I had IM first (not by choice), and I plan on probably going into IM.

Pros: Great foundation for every other rotation, decent overlap with Step 1 knowledge/MS 2 material so you don't feel completely lost and can actually formulate a semblance of a differential on your patients early on

Cons: Your first rotation has the steepest learning curve, and if you do want to go into IM, it's not necessarily ideal to have to work those out during the rotation. That being said, after a bumpy first 10 days or so, I got the hang of it and impressed my attendings enough to do well. I think it's not a big deal what order you get.

I have family medicine last, which I think is nice since it encompasses material from a lot of specialities, so my studying will hopefully overlap with step 2 studying. That's the plan at least.

I did IM first and thought it was a nice trial by fire. It's rough but having that shelf first made the others more doable.

 

[yuiness]

I did IM first and thought it was a nice trial by fire. It's rough but having that shelf first made the others more doable.

Medicine was one of the easier shelves for me. I think a big part of it was that I had it first and a lot of the material overlapped with Step 1 (which I studied a ton for, and which I scored very well on).

 

[dally1025]

It really doesn't matter at all. I ended up doing IM last which was nice because it made Step 2 studying a little less daunting since IM is the most represented speciality. If you can, try not to do whatever you're interested in first so you don't have those "this is so much better than studying" rosy glasses and you get a more accurate view of the speciality. Plus it's easier to impress people after you have a little experience under your belt both on the wards and on the shelf exam. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter that much. You've got to do them all anyway.