Best Medical Schools for various Clinical Rotations?

[fastboyslim]

So, it seems like the first two years of med school is very similar across the board. However, learning opportunities during rotations seem like they must differ somewhat more. A lot of the most prestigious schools people talk about are prestigious largely because of academic research and aren't necessarily the best teaching environments during clinical rotations.

What schools come to mind when you guys think of for best learning opportunities from rotations? Obviously, some of the most competitive, most prestigious schools like Hopkins come to mind immediately. However, what are some of the less extremely competitive schools you guys can think of that are still highly regarded (for example, miscellaneous private school X affiliated with a phenomenal local hospital surgical department) ?

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[urrugby]

UMDNJ - New Jersey Medical School. The majority of rotations are at University Hospital in Newark, which has, among other specialties, the busiest Level I ER in the state. There is also the option to rotate through Hackensack, which is a gorgeous hospital.

If you're out of state, it's pretty hard to get in, but in state applicants stand a solid chance. They don't participate in the US News rankings, but if you're like most sensible premeds and don't pay much attention to rankings, and check out their entering GPAs, MCATs, residency matches, etc. NJMS is a great program.

 

[RoadRunner17]

Wayne State has a lot of good clinical exposure. It used to be that you got to rotate through its many different hospitals, each of which are great places to learn the trade for certain departments (Royal Oak Beaumont for surgery, Detroit Receiving for emergency med, Henry Ford for cardio, etc.) during your clinical years. That being said, now you have to spend at least 9 months at one hospital during your third year, which kind of attenuates this factor, but the fact stands that Wayne State, despite not being ranked by USNWR or by most metrics, does offer opportunities for good clinical training. Now if they could move their preclinical curriculum into the 21st century.. anyway, they mostly take Michigan residents but if you're international/Canadian or have ties to the state, you might be able to pull that off.

 

[flip26]

This is a good idea for a thread to ask more about MS3 and MS4 instead of the pre-med obsession in dissecting the standardized education taught at all med schools in the first 2 years.

I have been gleaning tidbits regarding the importance of how MS3/4 is structured and how that may affect you - required versus elective rotations, the ability to do away rotations, the length of rotations in FM and other primary care disciplines, etc.

I hope some current med students will chime in here.

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

This is a good idea for a thread to ask more about MS3 and MS4 instead of the pre-med obsession in dissecting the standardized education taught at all med schools in the first 2 years.

I have been gleaning tidbits regarding the importance of how MS3/4 is structured and how that may affect you - required versus elective rotations, the ability to do away rotations, the length of rotations in FM and other primary care disciplines, etc.

I hope some current med students will chime in here.

This is a very good point - most pre-meds know very very little about the clinical years and their relative importance. They spend the whole interview day asking questions about whether there are 4 people per body in anatomy lab or 5 people per body, or how much PBL is in the curriculum, etc.

It is very hard to objectively rate which schools have "better" clinical rotations - but trying to find out more about the clinical years is a very good idea.

 

[bennnythejet]

UMDNJ - New Jersey Medical School. The majority of rotations are at University Hospital in Newark, which has, among other specialties, the busiest Level I ER in the state. There is also the option to rotate through Hackensack, which is a gorgeous hospital.

If you're out of state, it's pretty hard to get in, but in state applicants stand a solid chance. They don't participate in the US News rankings, but if you're like most sensible premeds and don't pay much attention to rankings, and check out their entering GPAs, MCATs, residency matches, etc. NJMS is a great program.

Hackensack is also one of the top 100 hospitals in the country.

 

[AFDOCtobe]

I would vote for either Baylor or UT Houston. I attend UT. You get to rotate in the largest medical center in the country. MD Anderson, Texas Heart Institute, St Lukes, Hermann, and county hospitals where you get to see a whole other world!

 

[Danbo1957]

Baylor or UT-Houston is right - The Texas Medical Center offers a student more clinical experience than any other place in the world.

 

[ZFanatic]

UTSWMC seems like it would be good. I work in a lab there and one of the MSTP's said that doing your rotations or residencies at Parkland is one of the best places ever to do it. Something like you're lucky to help deliver a baby or two at most hospitals, but at Parkland you'll probably deliver 10 to 15 by yourself, in the hallway. Not to mention there's Children's, St.Paul, Zale Lipshy, and many others in the area not far away.

 

[Law2Doc]

So, it seems like the first two years of med school is very similar across the board. However, learning opportunities during rotations seem like they must differ somewhat more. A lot of the most prestigious schools people talk about are prestigious largely because of academic research and aren't necessarily the best teaching environments during clinical rotations.

What schools come to mind when you guys think of for best learning opportunities from rotations? Obviously, some of the most competitive, most prestigious schools like Hopkins come to mind immediately. However, what are some of the less extremely competitive schools you guys can think of that are still highly regarded (for example, miscellaneous private school X affiliated with a phenomenal local hospital surgical department) ?

You can't really know which is going to be ideal. But I would suggest that any med school affiliated with a large teaching hospital (preferably one with a lot of beds and high ED volume) is going to be fine, and one also affiliated with smaller community hospitals (for a variety of experiences) would be a bonus. Other extras would be places with a trauma center, a burn center, a cancer center, an ambulatory center/clinics. In general you only find places with most of these at the major universities and the big state schools. They tend to be pretty independent of rank because, as you noted, they aren't really based on research money. I wouldn't get too focused on individual department's (eg surgery, etc) reputations -- you don't really know what you are going into yet, and don't have a great frame of reference against which to judge anyhow.

 

[lord_jeebus]

I don't see how hospital size is important, unless it's really small. There will always be more patients on your team than you can follow as a medical student.

I suppose there are certain hospitals that may offer particularly interesting rotations in certain fields (I can't really think of a good example off-hand however) - I don't know of any medical school that wouldn't let you apply to do that rotation as a visiting student.

I think the real key questions are how hard medical students work (the harder you work, the easier residency will be), how prepared the students feel they are for residency, and the absence of clear medical student abuse (which I think is rare). The residents are often the primary teachers on the wards, and schools with competitive residency programs tend to attract stronger residents.

 

[Law2Doc]

I don't see how hospital size is important, unless it's really small. There will always be more patients on your team than you can follow as a medical student....

It's not purely the number of patients, it's the variety. There is very little to learn on your 5th patient with the same ailment. You need a big enough hospital with high enough turnover that it handles a wide variety of issues in a wide variety of specialties. The big hospitals see the more complicated medical issues. The smaller hospitals see the same 5 things over and over again. Which is why I said it's a bonus to go to a med school affiliated with both, so you can see how both worlds work.

 

[SocialistMD]

I would vote for either Baylor or UT Houston. I attend UT. You get to rotate in the largest medical center in the country. MD Anderson, Texas Heart Institute, St Lukes, Hermann, and county hospitals where you get to see a whole other world!

Ditto this.