3rd and 4th rotations

[dayz]

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Does anyone have any advice as to which rotations to do when? Our school does it on a lottery so we have some say in what we want when.

Thanks!

 

[MadameLULU]

I recommend doing a search in the clinical rotations forum. Some people think it doesn't matter, but I think it depends on one's learning style. I'd rather learn how clinical rotations work (daily procedures, expectations, how the hospital runs etc) first and take rotations that I'm really interested in later on in the year when I am more likely to shine.

 

[Law2Doc]

Does anyone have any advice as to which rotations to do when? Our school does it on a lottery so we have some say in what we want when.

Thanks!

I'm sure everyone has his/her own theory. One thing I've heard is you don't want to do what you are most interested in first because you want to learn the basics (drawing blood etc) before you try to impress people.

 

[Catalystik]

Does anyone have any advice as to which rotations to do when? Our school does it on a lottery so we have some say in what we want when.

Thanks!

. . . . Unless you're toward the last in the lottery.

 

[erin682]

Get the hard stuff over with. Halfway through my 3rd year I'm so glad to be done with all but one of the most time consuming rotations. Its such a relief to be on the downhill.

 

[Wizard of Oz]

I'm sure everyone has his/her own theory. One thing I've heard is you don't want to do what you are most interested in first because you want to learn the basics (drawing blood etc) before you try to impress people.

They don't let you draw blood until M3?

Quick Q...Are there any schools where they give you shelf exams during M4?

 

[justwondering]

i agree with the comments above and want to add:
-its helpful to start with a longer rotation, so u dont find that u're at the end of the rotation and didnt learn much clinical stuff because u spent some time trying to figure out the basics of being in the hospital (how to pre-round effectively, how to present an h+p to an attending, how to request a consult, etc).
-also, if u have any particular seasonal preferences, u may factor those in too. for example, some ppl dont like surgery in the summer months because they end up spending their whole summer indoors and in the OR. or u may feel like u will work better (be more refreshed) at a specific time of the year.

 

[Wizard of Oz]

because u spent some time trying to figure out the basics of being in the hospital (how to pre-round effectively, how to present an h+p to an attending, how to request a consult, etc).

This is not a knock on you, rather it is a complaint about the system in general. Why should somebody have to spend four years in college and two years in medical school before they learn the basics of being in the hospital or how to present an H & P to an attending? I can't speak to my classmates, but I try to practice presenting as an M1. They don't expect me to know what I'm doing, but I think that practicing this stuff is as important as learning the H & P itself. It just seems to me that there are more important things to spend my third year tuition on.

 

[erin682]

This is not a knock on you, rather it is a complaint about the system in general. Why should somebody have to spend four years in college and two years in medical school before they learn the basics of being in the hospital or how to present an H & P to an attending? I can't speak to my classmates, but I try to practice presenting as an M1. They don't expect me to know what I'm doing, but I think that practicing this stuff is as important as learning the H & P itself. It just seems to me that there are more important things to spend my third year tuition on.

Thats a fair enough point but there is no way you can know what its really like to present patients during rounds until you do it. Its pretty different than the practice you do during M1 and M2. Plus there are tons of logistical things about how hospitals run that you have to know to be effective and efficient but nobody ever teaches you. Like it or not a fair chunk of 3rd year, esp early on, is spent picking up these things.

 

[Tired]

We also have a lottery, and I got what I thought at the time was a big shaft: Internal Medicine first.

Turns out it was a real boon. I didn't realize how much of every other rotation was just IM topics rehashed. I found doing IM first made me look really good on the rest of my rotations. It also wasn't that difficult, because I had just done the Step I marathon, so most of the IM topics were still fresh in my head.

Granted, I'm surgically-oriented, so it didn't matter that I wasn't a super-star on IM (although I still honored it). If you're looking at doing Medicine, maybe this isn't such a good idea.