4th year elective question...

[NAGNAM]

The way my school has 4th year electives set up, we have a schedule of the following:

- one inpatient rotation
- one outpatient rotation
- one ER rotation
- one critical care rotation
- two "selectives" of whatever you want

Is my school unique in having such a rigid structure to their 4th year rotations? I'm personally going into radiology, and although I can see some benefits to doing an outpatient rotation, I feel like such strict rules are preventing me from a lot of opportunities (i.e., I will be limited to only two radiology rotations). Is everyone else's school like this, or are we getting screwed?

And getting screwed wouldn't be anything new... my school's policy for 3rd year clinical rotations is honor/pass/fail, NO high pass.

Thanks for any thoughts

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[obiwan]

The way my school has 4th year electives set up, we have a schedule of the following:

- one inpatient rotation
- one outpatient rotation
- one ER rotation
- one critical care rotation
- two "selectives" of whatever you want

Is my school unique in having such a rigid structure to their 4th year rotations? I'm personally going into radiology, and although I can see some benefits to doing an outpatient rotation, I feel like such strict rules are preventing me from a lot of opportunities (i.e., I will be limited to only two radiology rotations). Is everyone else's school like this, or are we getting screwed?

And getting screwed wouldn't be anything new... my school's policy for 3rd year clinical rotations is honor/pass/fail, NO high pass.

Thanks for any thoughts

my school requires a ICU month and a subI month in addition to other courses like geriatrics, ambulatory that are needed to graduate so yeah we have quite a few things that are needed but we also get time for electives... you will have the rest of your career to focus on radiology so I think its good that you get exposure to doing an ICU month and subI especially if you're going to be needing to do a prelim medicine year or what not.... hopefully you don't have to do a scholarly project to graduate on top of that

 

[IM Substance P]

my school requires a ICU month and a subI month in addition to other courses like geriatrics, ambulatory that are needed to graduate so yeah we have quite a few things that are needed but we also get time for electives... you will have the rest of your career to focus on radiology so I think its good that you get exposure to doing an ICU month and subI especially if you're going to be needing to do a prelim medicine year or what not.... hopefully you don't have to do a scholarly project to graduate on top of that

+1... Every school has at least a mildly restrictive schedule in fourth year despite what most fourth years will have you think. You'll have plenty of time to be a radiologist when you're all grown up.

 

[2012mdc]

+1... Every school has at least a mildly restrictive schedule in fourth year despite what most fourth years will have you think. You'll have plenty of time to be a radiologist when you're all grown up.

My school requires 1 outpatient ambulatory month. Also a max of two non-clinical electives such as research, business of medicine, etc.

 

[Droopy Snoopy]

The way my school has 4th year electives set up, we have a schedule of the following:

- one inpatient rotation
- one outpatient rotation
- one ER rotation
- one critical care rotation
- two "selectives" of whatever you want

Is my school unique in having such a rigid structure to their 4th year rotations? I'm personally going into radiology, and although I can see some benefits to doing an outpatient rotation, I feel like such strict rules are preventing me from a lot of opportunities (i.e., I will be limited to only two radiology rotations). Is everyone else's school like this, or are we getting screwed?

And getting screwed wouldn't be anything new... my school's policy for 3rd year clinical rotations is honor/pass/fail, NO high pass.

Thanks for any thoughts

Your schedule is what you make of it as a 4th year, despite what might seem to be lots of restrictions at first glance. For example you'll get as much experience reading chest films during an ICU month as you would during a general rads month. You should be able to get a decent amount of ultrasound experience if you do your OP month in OB and jump on every opportunity in the ED.

 

[DrBowtie]

While we have no electives in third year, there is only 3 of 9 required rotations in fourth year. I'd much rather have some flex time in 3rd year to figure out what I want since those few months after the match will be throw away months anyways.

 

[JustUseYourHead]

No, that's not unique at all. Schools have to have a rigid schedule in order to maintain accreditation and to have the ability to grant you a degree after 4 years becuase they have to be able to say you met all requirements, and verify you did something during fourth year. But you can choose things that fulfill those requirements as you want. Most schools have restrictions on how many of the same rotation you can do also i.e. only 3 months of ortho.

 

[wannabeOBGYN]

The way my school has 4th year electives set up, we have a schedule of the following:

- one inpatient rotation
- one outpatient rotation
- one ER rotation
- one critical care rotation
- two "selectives" of whatever you want

Is my school unique in having such a rigid structure to their 4th year rotations? I'm personally going into radiology, and although I can see some benefits to doing an outpatient rotation, I feel like such strict rules are preventing me from a lot of opportunities (i.e., I will be limited to only two radiology rotations). Is everyone else's school like this, or are we getting screwed?

And getting screwed wouldn't be anything new... my school's policy for 3rd year clinical rotations is honor/pass/fail, NO high pass.

Thanks for any thoughts

Our fourth year consists of:

1 month ER
3 months rural (1 of which you can set up anywhere pretty much)
1 month optional board study in July
1 month optional vacation time
4 months electives (5 or 6 if you give up board study and vacation), but only 2 can be in any given specialty (this can be gotten around by rotation in subspecialties within your area of choice)

So I think everyone has crap to deal with. 3 months rural = suck. The only bright side is that it looks like I may be able to go to Australia for the third month.

 

[bioteach]

Our 4th year rules/requirements include (1) one month basic sciences elective, (2) maximum 3 months in one specialty, (3) maximum 5 months of away rotations, (4) no more than 2 months of non-clinical electives. So we are really wide open to do whatever we want within those parameters. Oh, and 2 months of "flex-time" (i.e. no academic requirements) to use however we choose.

 

[lockjaw]

Our 4th year consists of:
1 month Internal Medicine AI
1 month of another AI of our choice
1 month of ER
2 separate surgical subspecialties, each for 2 weeks (e.g. 2 weeks of ophtho and 2 weeks of ENT)
1 month of either being a teaching assistant for a 1st/2nd year class, or 1 month of research
1 optional reading month for Step 2
2 optional vacation months
6 months of electives - I don't think there are maximums for how many can be done in one specialty