1st EM rotation = Sub-I?

[TheOther]

Do most students get EM experience before they go on their aways? My school doesn't have a home program so the earliest I can do an EM rotation is June of 4th year = pretty much the start of away season lol.

How do I even try to function as a sub-i if it's my first EM rotation??

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[surely]

Do most students get EM experience before they go on their aways? My school doesn't have a home program so the earliest I can do an EM rotation is June of 4th year = pretty much the start of away season lol.

How do I even try to function as a sub-i if it's my first EM rotation??

What have other students from your school done in the past?

The two things that come to mind for me are: Get experience through shadowing. Aim for Away rotations at institutions that don't offer EM rotations during third year (so all the new sub-I students are equally unprepared).

 

[RPedigo]

Do most students get EM experience before they go on their aways? My school doesn't have a home program so the earliest I can do an EM rotation is June of 4th year = pretty much the start of away season lol.

How do I even try to function as a sub-i if it's my first EM rotation??

I did some shadowing as a 3rd-year medical student, but my first formal in-depth EM rotation was a subinternship (where I ultimately matched!). It'll be OK 🙂

 

[alpinism]

Most people do either a 3rd year or 4th year home rotation before aways.

Agree with the above try to do a rotation in June at programs without 3rd year rotations.

 

[Elevencents]

My first away was my first EM rotation. You’ll be ok. Just act interested and help as much as you can.

 

[chasingdaylight]

Try to arrange multiple EM SubI's and try to do the one you really want to go to as the second or third SubI.

Or if you can't to this, and can only do 1 sub I, it really depends on your strength as EM student.
If you feel you generally do well on rotations, feel confident that you will look better in person than on paper, do your sub I at the place you want to end up at.

However, I have heard from many people that often times SubI's can hurt students more than help them. If you think your numbers/scores can speak for themselves, a mediocre or poor SubI can hurt your chances. But if you are middle of the pack, a stellar SubI would get you interviews at sites that may have passed you up based on your numbers alone.

good luck

 

[contender603]

However, I have heard from many people that often times SubI's can hurt students more than help them.

Remember that it's not just the programs evaluating you on your aways and your interviews but also you evaluating them. Could doing a sub-I potentially hurt you if you do poorly on the rotation? Sure. But hiding from the program you like because you're afraid of this is a bad idea. Would you want to end up doing residency at a location where you didn't mix with the residents/faculty? You will always have a second rotation to fall back on and get the grades back up. Go for your number one and see what life is like there for a month!

Personally, I did my first EM rotation as an away rotation and then my home rotation the following month. I felt that this was plenty of experience and was never asked on my interviews why I didn't do more. I chose to do my away at a location that I liked and a program vastly different from my home institution (community vs academic). I am just one small data point though just like everyone else here. Take all of our advice with a grain of salt.

 

[gamerEMdoc]

However, I have heard from many people that often times SubI's can hurt students more than help them

Your application is made or destroyed based on your clinical performance. The rest is all just things that help to differentiate people of the same skill level. I’ll take 8 candidates with Top 10% SLOEs and 40th percentile boards over 8 candidates with Middle 1/3 SLOEs and top 10% boards. And I’d imagine most faculty at residencies would say the same. Where the other aspects of the application become important (like boards, research, etc) is differentiating the people of the same level. If you have two candidates who are good social fits for your program, and both were “top 1/3” type candidates on their SLOEs, and all else is equal, then sure you’ll take the person with the higher grades or board scores. But if you think you can have good board scores and coast on them to a bunch of interviews without showing you can work in the ED clinically, you are mistaken.

My point is, you can’t avoid Sub-I’s. They are the most important part of the application. You just have to accept that, and do well on them, the SLOEs are the gateway into matching in EM.