Advice for picking rotation site

[Billroth_III]

Second year who will be having to pick a rotation site for the 3rd and 4th year. Open to most specialties but am all in for general surgery until board scores or interests suggest otherwise.

My school has a site with a surgery residency that didn’t make the merger but still has residents. Would this be an ok site or should I select sites with residencies that made the merger? Would it at least be a good idea to do an elective there and try to get a letter from the former PD? The site is closely connected with my school and could be good for connections which is why I’m even considering it.

I’d love to hear what you beautiful people of SDN think of this situation.

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[Neopolymath]

Second year who will be having to pick a rotation site for the 3rd and 4th year. Open to most specialties but am all in for general surgery until board scores or interests suggest otherwise.

My school has a site with a surgery residency that didn’t make the merger but still has residents. Would this be an ok site or should I select sites with residencies that made the merger? Would it at least be a good idea to do an elective there and try to get a letter from the former PD? The site is closely connected with my school and could be good for connections which is why I’m even considering it.

I’d love to hear what you beautiful people of SDN think of this situation.

You are going to get some varied opinions on this. You will have to synthesize the advice for your goals.

IMO, go for the most academic site for the year overall. Definitely go for the site that has the most inpatient rotations (usually the same as most academic.) Look, academic medicine *sucks* in a lot of ways compared to preceptor rotations. It's filled with annoying people doing things in pointlessly inefficient and obtuse ways, especially IM. IMO, it also gives the best student training (residency is debatable.) Preceptor rotations are usually more chill and give you more real opportunities to do fun things like procedures. THIS DOES NOT MATTER even though it sounds nice. Academic rotations make you prepared to do well on surgery audition rotations 4th year when it matters. No one cares about you being first assist on all procedures 3rd year at your 4th year audition even at community based residency programs. Your goal of third year is to learn overall, figure out what you want to do, and prepare to do well on auditions functioning in the academic team. Some of your classmates are going to say the goal is to "get to do stuff" like an attending would. This is largely wrong because you are training to be an intern not an attending.

All this said, if I was applying to a field that didn't require auditions like FM, community IM, or something else then it would be tempting to do a rural preceptor based site. It's a better lifestyle, more fun, less dumb parts of academics, etc. But since you said surgery, you need to be ready to audition hard and that means working hard third year mostly with inpatient and mostly with residents.

Hopefully this starter comment kicks off the debate. I encourage you to read old posts on this as it gets discussed every year in the DO forum. Good luck with whatever you do!

 

[Dr. Death]

I second everything the above poster said. And rotating at a program that made the merger with residents is going to be far more beneficial than rotating at a program that didn't make the merger.

 

[MLNS]

1) Make sure it has a residency in the field you want (highly possible you’ll switch so hard to go with this one)

2) Make sure it has as many rotations w/ residents as possible and as many inpatient rotations as possible

That’s it. Everything else is smoke and mirrors

Your goal is to see as many actual sick people as you can and to write as many notes as you can. Trust me. You’ll thank me come intern yr

 

[hallowmann]

Go to the place with the most active residencies (because you might change your mind and it's good to have a place familiar with you to fall back on), especially ones in the field you want to go into. If their residency didn't make the ACGME cut, that means they are graduating their residents and closing, so no, don't go there if you have a better choice.