3rd Year Rotation Site

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
In picking the hospital to rotate at, what's the most important thing to consider?

Training? Hours? Grades?? etc

Depends on what you want to go into. If you want to go into specialty X, pick the site where you can get good grades and network with academic physicians who will write you letters.

If you just want to pass through, pick a site with reasonable hours and easy grading.

An example: I'm interested in a surgical field. I picked a community hospital with a reputation for huge operative volume and a "true surgical experience". It's been great. But the site is also notorious for harsh grading, so I'm banking on the shelf to pull my ass out of the fire.

What do you think future residency directors are going care about more: my likely pass to high pass in surgery or the fact that I rotated at hospital X?
 
There are a lot of things to consider and their "ranking" will vary by individual. For me, I chose a site that was close to my friends and family and one that Mrs. Survivor DO, who was in the same class as me, was happy with. Other things to consider are which training programs are at each site? Are you interested in surgery? Then you should choose a site with a surgery residency etc. Even if you don't end up going to that program it will provide you with the opportunity to get a LOR from a program director.

Survivor DO
 
Depends on what you want to go into. If you want to go into specialty X, pick the site where you can get good grades and network with academic physicians who will write you letters.

If you just want to pass through, pick a site with reasonable hours and easy grading.

An example: I'm interested in a surgical field. I picked a community hospital with a reputation for huge operative volume and a "true surgical experience". It's been great. But the site is also notorious for harsh grading, so I'm banking on the shelf to pull my ass out of the fire.

What do you think future residency directors are going care about more: my likely pass to high pass in surgery or the fact that I rotated at hospital X?

Let's say you want to do a surgical subspecialty. One hospital has a surgical residency, the other doesn't. Would it really matter? I always thought people got LOR from electives
 
Let's say you want to do a surgical subspecialty. One hospital has a surgical residency, the other doesn't. Would it really matter? I always thought people got LOR from electives

In my case (I want to do ENT) it didn't matter that I didn't rub elbows with the academic general surgeons on my rotation. But if I were going into gen surg, I would've done my rotation at the university hospital for networking purposes. The stronger relationships you form with attendings, the stronger your LORs will be.

Just my two cents.
 
So then in your case all that really matters is grades. Is that right?
 
Pick a place with good teaching, good hours, and good preceptors. Grades and that stuff largely comes from the shelf.

With good teaching, you're set with the clinical side of things. Good hours = more time to study for shelf and be happy and sleep. Good preceptors leads to all of the things I covered before.

What does all of this translate to? Good grades!
 
Yea I guess I'm picking between very good hours and easier rotations (the residents/attendings aren't as rough) v.s. better teaching, worse hours
 
Top