can a medical student from GTSOM please tell me what clinical experience you get there in your first two years
No problem. Clinical experiences (and really, the doctoring curriculum) are definitely emphasized during the first two years here. By the second week of school students spend one afternoon per week in the hospital as part of the Patient-Physician Communication course. Basically, you are in a group of 6 or so first years and your preceptor (an attending physician). The first week you observe your preceptor conduct a patient interview, then you return to your discussion rooms and talk about the experience. Then, one person from your group goes each week while the others watch--followed up with discussion once again. At this point your interviews are very open-ended and are designed to make you more comfortable talking with patients. Obviously, you are not expected to provide ANY medical advice or anything like that. I found the course to be a great experience--it gets you more comfortable talking with people and you learn a LOT by watching your classmates go through it. When it's your week you have some more responsibility too because you go to the floor, arrange the interview with the charge nurse, etc.
Anyway, after that course (which is the first few months) you slowly get more involved in your clinical experiences. It's October now and we are finishing up our second doctoring course that is similar to the first, except you are split up in groups of 2 for your interviews, and report back to the bigger group at the end. Starting in the second semester of the first year, you are placed in an ambulatory care setting where you are paired with a doc and work with them. From what I've heard the experience at this point varies. You submit preferences, so if you want to be in a surgical setting you can focus on that, for example. Just keep in mind that if you elect to do something specialized like surgery, you will be able to see a LOT, but will often have less of a hands-on role than if you are in more of a primary care setting. This makes sense seeing as you are just a first year. I've talked to M2's who did primary care for their ambulatory care course and some say basically learned how to give a comprehensive physical exam, for instance.
Also, interspersed throughout all of this are other "doctoring" courses like Service Learning, which places you at an underserved site in the DC area. Like ambulatory care, experiences vary. A few examples: I know one who works at a vaccine clinic and another who does nutrition lectures at a school. There are definitely an ample enough of these doctoring courses, to such a degree that at some points you just want to have that extra time to study and it gets a little annoying. But they always remind you of the bigger picture: why you are going to be a physician, what it actually means to be a doctor, etc. Oh and side note, once anatomy starts in Nov these doctoring classes are toned down a bit, but pick up again later in the year once people get accustomed to everything.
Hope that helps!
also what hospitals do you guys do rotations/shadowing at? Just GUH or do you guys go to Walter Reed and other hospitals in the area?
This is another great thing about GUSOM. You do your rotations within MedStar health, which is a network of hospitals in the Washington-Metro region. Walter Reed was one of them but it has recently closed. There is a list of hospitals in the network that I won't duplicate, but among them are the huge, inner city Washington Hospital Center and the Nat'l rehabilitation hospital. Side note: those who are concerned that GUH is not a level 1 trauma center should know that for our ER rotations students most often (might even be required to?) do their rotation at Washington Hospital Center, which is a level 1 trauma center. So, the great thing about being a part of Med Star health is you get to see a lot of different clinical contexts and can see hospitals from different perspectives (community, inner city, rehab, etc.)
