Thank you for all your responses NedLudd. I was accepted last week and will probably end up at Einstein, so I have lots of questions.
A couple more things:
how long is anatomy? entire first semester?
how much time are students given to study for boards?
how is ICM structured? when do you start working with patients?
Thank you so much!
Hey, congratulations! If you do decide to come, welcome to Einstein.
-Anatomy is four months. It basically starts November 1 and ends March 1, with winter break in the middle. This means that we take it during the last part of first semester and the early part of second semester, which is nice since it gives us a couple of months to adjust before starting.
-I should remember how much time we have off for boards, but I don't. Sorry. I seem to remember that it is a fairly "typical" amount of time relative to most other schools. Try PM'ing Zebalong, if she's around.
-We start ICM in early October, IIRC. You start off with a few sessions of discussions or working with practice patients (standardized and real), then they introduce the second part of ICM, where you'll be going to your clinical site. Here's a response to a question that I got in a PM. It's a bit long, but hopefully it helps...
In terms of what we've been doing our first semester, we meet twice per week (2.5 hours each time)--on Mondays, it's in the Clinical Skills Center in small groups, where we have MD preceptors, and we learn the basics, like how to interview patients, take a proper history, etc. This is the class where they bring in standardized patients (actors), and we take turns practicing our interviewing techniques (or just one-on-one if it's being recorded), then get feedback from each other and the preceptors. They've also brought in real patients for us to practice interviewing (and learn about their illness), and we take trips to the wards and practice with inpatients. Other sessions we spend discussing and learning about various aspects of clinical practice, patient-doctor relationship building, etc. This is also the course where we've been learning some of the basic physical exam skills--so far we have done the cardiac, pulmonary, and abdomen exams, as well as the basic BP, pulse, etc. They correlate these with the region we're learning about in anatomy at the time.
On Wednesdays (the second session of the week), we go to our clinical sites. You get to rank where you want to be and what you're most interested in, and they try to place you at that site. Here, you're teamed up with one or two MDs who work in that field, at that site. They teach you how to interview, present to the attending, and do parts of the physical exam. It's done entirely with the patients at your site, and provides a ton of hands-on experience and patient exposure. You really learn a lot and, despite how helpful the standardized patients may be, nothing beats talking to real patients with real problems in the hospital. I'm not sure what it's like for other people, but my preceptor also spends a lot of time with us explaining the pathologies that we come across and why they are presenting with the symptoms that they have, what to look out for, how we might treat it, etc. I can tell you that my preceptor is awesome, and I am learning a ton from her. Other people seem really happy with theirs, as well. Groups are four students or less (majority are less), and many are even one-on-one with their preceptor. A lot of great individualized attention and practice.