As I alluded to before, many of us turn this autonomy and freedom to our benefit at AZCOM(which by the way is not the only school struggling to find good quality rotations). I had hours and hours to focus on my weak points, do practice questions and read a good text book on a highly hot topic I knew I was struggling with.yes I had a lot of rotations I worked 80 hours with weekend call but others were 4-5 hours a day and I learned far more useful and apllicable info. I hated spending hours learning how a particular OCD attending wanted me to write specific discharge notes. I did not learn from that.
If you mean shortchanged as
Good point. Not sure...
Nope, I had to jump through a few hoops of paperwork but as long as I met their core requirement they were glad. It meant less demand on their limited resources. AZCOM requires 2 months IM (one inpatient), 2 months FM, pediatrics, cardio, OB/Gyn, rural rotation, gen surg, psych your third year with one elective (i dont think I missed anything). I met those requirements at sites I wanted for inpatient IM, FM, pediatrics, ob/gyn, gen surg -- for rural and elective I did ortho and another pediatrics.
I am not against bribes. But I feel I got an awesome education and obviously matched in the field I wanted (ortho).
This is amazing, I am a MD student so don't know a whole lot about DO rotations but writing no notes?
I'd say I have wrote at least 200-300 so far and I have 4 months left in 3rd year.
Looks like you took the initiative and found sites where you got excellent clinical education. But at the same time, i am concern that you had to take the initiative, and that someone who wasn't as motivated as you were, or couldn't travel or be as flexible (ie family, etc) would not have the same opportunity that you had. And you had to pay $40k in tuition to AZCOM for you to do most of the legwork (of course having your home institution provide medical malpractice insurance is helpful, but it is actually pretty cheap for students).
When I was a student at PCOM, I did my general surgery rotation at a large university affliated community hospital (level 1 trauma center) that had its own acgme general surgery program. That site was assigned to me (I didn't have to do anything). Same for my Internal Medicine rotation (large university-affiliated community hospital, level 1 trauma although doesn't matter for medicine) with its own acgme internal medicine program. Same for OB/GYN. Family Medicine was at a place (community hospital) with its own Family Med residency (combined AOA/ACGME) where I spent the duration in clinic. Again, didn't have to do any legwork, was assigned those spots. Peds was at a university-affiliated hospital where it didn't have a peds residency program - my peds rotation was split halfway between inpatient and outpatient experience (and inpatient was with a peds attending and family med residents). Psych was similar (no psych residents, but inpatient experience with family med residents at a community hospital). The only legwork I had to do as a 3rd year was decide where I wanted to do my Surgery Selective and IM Selective (again, I just had to pick from a list, and it was done - ended up doing pediatric surgery at a large university-affiliated community hospital and GI at a community hospital with an ACGME GI fellowship). As a 4th year student, sometimes I couldn't decide what I wanted to do on the next rotation (and only decide a week in advance). Fortunately the list of networks and affiliates were large enough that it was possible for me to schedule a rotation at the last minute (and get a decent place)
So overall, I had good overall clinical experiences, with a good mixture of inpatient and outpatient exposure, and worked with lots of residents. And I wrote my fair share of notes (whether H&P, daily progress note, discharge summary, pre-op note, post-op note, etc). And I didn't have to work hard or go out of my school's network to get that experience.
So I am slightly disappointed to hear that you had to work hard to get the experiences that you did. I'm glad that you did. And I'm happy that you matched in your specialty and location of choice. But I wonder if you did well in spite of your medical school, and not because of your medical school? (I have heard about AZCOM's poor clinical educational setup from a lot of AZCOM alumni so it didn't surprise me, and I've met many AZCOM alumni who did what you did - took the initiative to get their experiences, sometimes with the school standing in their way)
The one thing I noticed when I was a 4th year student ... a lot of electives and rotations at a lot of hospitals (especially university medical centers attached to a medical school) only allow 4th years to rotate through (and their electives were not available for 3rd year students). It is easier to do a 3rd year selective/elective at a hospital where the school already has a formal affiliation agreement. So to get the experiences that you had (without much assistance from your medical school or its clinical affiliates), you must have work very hard (and very proactive).
And while it is great that AZCOM's clinical rotations will give you time to study for the boards (much to your chagrin), there is something to be said for clinical exposure and experience. Reading up on salicylate toxicity is not the same as actually managing someone with salicylate toxicity. How frequently do you monitor the electrolytes, how to physically put in an A-line for frequent ABGs, titrating the bicarb drip, starting a dextrose infusion, etc. To actually see and manage a real patient from admission to discharge (or transfer to medicine as a downgrade) is more informative. There is only so much you can learn from a book. But since you're going to ortho ... insert ortho joke here
I would like to remind everyone that the OP's current school or clinical site have not been publicly identified yet (and I understand the OP's reluctance to identify the school or site). AZCOM was brought up by another user based on his/her personal experience.
Yup - while a PCOM student, I worked side-by-side with students from Temple, Drexel, Jefferson, and Penn. It was my family medicine rotation that I worked with students from another DO school in addition to PCOM students.
And at my current place (university hospital), the 3rd year MD students are split up between the main hospital, and the community hospitals that the medical school is affiliated with. It's impossible to have all the 3rd year MD students rotate at the main hospital.
Looks like you took the initiative and found sites where you got excellent clinical education. But at the same time, i am concern that you had to take the initiative, and that someone who wasn't as motivated as you were, or couldn't travel or be as flexible (ie family, etc) would not have the same opportunity that you had. And you had to pay $40k in tuition to AZCOM for you to do most of the legwork (of course having your home institution provide medical malpractice insurance is helpful, but it is actually pretty cheap for students).
When I was a student at PCOM, I did my general surgery rotation at a large university affliated community hospital (level 1 trauma center) that had its own acgme general surgery program. That site was assigned to me (I didn't have to do anything). Same for my Internal Medicine rotation (large university-affiliated community hospital, level 1 trauma although doesn't matter for medicine) with its own acgme internal medicine program. Same for OB/GYN. Family Medicine was at a place (community hospital) with its own Family Med residency (combined AOA/ACGME) where I spent the duration in clinic. Again, didn't have to do any legwork, was assigned those spots. Peds was at a university-affiliated hospital where it didn't have a peds residency program - my peds rotation was split halfway between inpatient and outpatient experience (and inpatient was with a peds attending and family med residents). Psych was similar (no psych residents, but inpatient experience with family med residents at a community hospital). The only legwork I had to do as a 3rd year was decide where I wanted to do my Surgery Selective and IM Selective (again, I just had to pick from a list, and it was done - ended up doing pediatric surgery at a large university-affiliated community hospital and GI at a community hospital with an ACGME GI fellowship). As a 4th year student, sometimes I couldn't decide what I wanted to do on the next rotation (and only decide a week in advance). Fortunately the list of networks and affiliates were large enough that it was possible for me to schedule a rotation at the last minute (and get a decent place)
So overall, I had good overall clinical experiences, with a good mixture of inpatient and outpatient exposure, and worked with lots of residents. And I wrote my fair share of notes (whether H&P, daily progress note, discharge summary, pre-op note, post-op note, etc). And I didn't have to work hard or go out of my school's network to get that experience.
So I am slightly disappointed to hear that you had to work hard to get the experiences that you did. I'm glad that you did. And I'm happy that you matched in your specialty and location of choice. But I wonder if you did well in spite of your medical school, and not because of your medical school? (I have heard about AZCOM's poor clinical educational setup from a lot of AZCOM alumni so it didn't surprise me, and I've met many AZCOM alumni who did what you did - took the initiative to get their experiences, sometimes with the school standing in their way)
The one thing I noticed when I was a 4th year student ... a lot of electives and rotations at a lot of hospitals (especially university medical centers attached to a medical school) only allow 4th years to rotate through (and their electives were not available for 3rd year students). It is easier to do a 3rd year selective/elective at a hospital where the school already has a formal affiliation agreement. So to get the experiences that you had (without much assistance from your medical school or its clinical affiliates), you must have work very hard (and very proactive).
And while it is great that AZCOM's clinical rotations will give you time to study for the boards (much to your chagrin), there is something to be said for clinical exposure and experience. Reading up on salicylate toxicity is not the same as actually managing someone with salicylate toxicity. How frequently do you monitor the electrolytes, how to physically put in an A-line for frequent ABGs, titrating the bicarb drip, starting a dextrose infusion, etc. To actually see and manage a real patient from admission to discharge (or transfer to medicine as a downgrade) is more informative. There is only so much you can learn from a book. But since you're going to ortho ... insert ortho joke here
I would like to remind everyone that the OP's current school or clinical site have not been publicly identified yet (and I understand the OP's reluctance to identify the school or site). AZCOM was brought up by another user based on his/her personal experience.
Yup - while a PCOM student, I worked side-by-side with students from Temple, Drexel, Jefferson, and Penn. It was my family medicine rotation that I worked with students from another DO school in addition to PCOM students.
And at my current place (university hospital), the 3rd year MD students are split up between the main hospital, and the community hospitals that the medical school is affiliated with. It's impossible to have all the 3rd year MD students rotate at the main hospital.
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I'm here for yaThis has been my experience from PCOM so far. Also, it's important to find out what previous students thought of a rotation site. A quick question on Facebook or text messages to your med school buddies will usually get you a person who's been to that site.
Good thing about PCOM is the extensive list of rotation sites for each rotation. There are always a chance to switch to another site if you find out that the particular site your assigned with is not very good. I guess this is one of the reasons why PCOM is a highly regarded DO school.
Nope, I had to jump through a few hoops of paperwork but as long as I met their core requirement they were glad. It meant less demand on their limited resources. AZCOM requires 2 months IM (one inpatient), 2 months FM, pediatrics, cardio, OB/Gyn, rural rotation, gen surg, psych your third year with one elective (i dont think I missed anything). I met those requirements at sites I wanted for inpatient IM, FM, pediatrics, ob/gyn, gen surg -- for rural and elective I did ortho and another pediatrics.
our fourth year they require sub speciality IM, critical care, subspecialty surgery, ED.. I set up my own rotations for all except critical care, the rest of the rotations I set up as audition rotations in ortho - well one I did as sports medicine in an ortho program because our school only allows so many rotations in one field. so I set up a sports medicine rotation with a sports med doc who worked at an ortho program I was interested in.
Lots of strings pulled, lots of leg work and flowers to my coordinator
not hard to make a preceptor/hospital/etc "in system" -- its just a bunch of paperwork.
