Knowing what you know now, which clinical electives do you recommend taking as an MS4 that would help prepare you for residency or being an internist? What's the better course of action - taking a diverse array of IM-subspecialties to help figure out what field you want to go into, or doing electives outside of IM (e.g. ophtho, ortho) since the exposure during residency is less? Which electives did you do that you found particularly useful?
Clinical Electives during Medical School
- Thread starter Duke1K
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2013
- Messages
- 25,160
- Reaction score
- 34,865
it's always mentioned in IM residency you do some EM months, but I found doing EM as a med student to be very helpful
it helped me understand the thinking in the ED, which can impact what you do on the floor (and surprise, isn't always in the ED note.... which sometimes you do the whole admit without that note at all)
it made me feel less scared about killing people out of the gate, because I felt a little bit more confident that I would keep emergencies in mind even on the floor, and some experience approaching them
and I think it helped me on nightfloat to be a better nightfloat intern, and be less scared
plus, a lot of students find it's a lighter rotation in terms of days and hours, provided you don't mind the work & the changing hours, yet it's still educational
plus, if you don't do an optho rotation and you're proactive, you can learn/practice skills that are useful for eyes later
you also get some rads, although obvs not as much as a rads month, but I did a whole rads month, not clear to me you need it, or that it would be more useful than an EM month
(not knocking the idea of doing both, just if you pick one....)
you get some ortho, some ob/gyn (you need some gyn for IM)
also, hate to say, there's a fair amount of musculoskeletal pain and general outpt medicine that is practiced, so I thought I picked up things that helped me in outpt clinic
someone could say you could just do an FM month in that case, but I think I'm trying to say EM gave me a mix I appreciated that you wouldn't get from just an FM month
it helped me understand the thinking in the ED, which can impact what you do on the floor (and surprise, isn't always in the ED note.... which sometimes you do the whole admit without that note at all)
it made me feel less scared about killing people out of the gate, because I felt a little bit more confident that I would keep emergencies in mind even on the floor, and some experience approaching them
and I think it helped me on nightfloat to be a better nightfloat intern, and be less scared
plus, a lot of students find it's a lighter rotation in terms of days and hours, provided you don't mind the work & the changing hours, yet it's still educational
plus, if you don't do an optho rotation and you're proactive, you can learn/practice skills that are useful for eyes later
you also get some rads, although obvs not as much as a rads month, but I did a whole rads month, not clear to me you need it, or that it would be more useful than an EM month
(not knocking the idea of doing both, just if you pick one....)
you get some ortho, some ob/gyn (you need some gyn for IM)
also, hate to say, there's a fair amount of musculoskeletal pain and general outpt medicine that is practiced, so I thought I picked up things that helped me in outpt clinic
someone could say you could just do an FM month in that case, but I think I'm trying to say EM gave me a mix I appreciated that you wouldn't get from just an FM month
