Hey everyone. I'm curious as to some of the details of clinical rotations for DO schools. It seems that many schools outsource their clinical sites to a variety of hospitals and there's not necessarily a guarantee for which hospital(s) you'll do rotations at.
Do students typically stay at one hospital during their 3rd/4th year or do they attend a few hospitals depending on the rotation? If they do constantly move around to different hospitals, how do you manage that in terms of a living situation? Do you live at month to month leases for a couple of years and constantly move your stuff? Seems a bit stressful. Any insight would be much appreciated!
It probably depends on the specific school, but my school had rotation sites in the city, around the state, and around neighboring states. There was a match like system for required 3rd and 4th year rotations where you ranked rotation sites from most preferable to least preferable. You made a list for each rotation (family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, etc.), and based on an algorithm your schedule was created. I thought it was fair and I liked my schedule.
What your schedule looks like will be determined by what you find important. Many rotation sites offered rotations in a variety of different specialities, so if you wanted to you could try to make all your rotations at one hospital. Alternatively if you wanted to stay in a particular area you could try to make all your rotations in that city/state, but at different hospitals if needed. For me, I ranked rotations I thought were important (internal medicine, EM, and surgery) at "good" hospitals no matter how far away they were. I then ranked everything else based on proximity to my apartment. I ended up at like 5 or 6 hospitals for my core rotations. The farthest away being 3 hrs away and everything else within an hour. My school provided housing for any rotation greater than an hour away. I kept the same apartment for 4years. A few people got rid of their apartment after second year and lived like nomads until graduating.
Some schools, including mine, had clinical rotation tracks where you did all of your rotations at one specific hospital. Space was limited for this option at my school (like 10% of the class). People accepted to this program typically got an apartment next to the hospital.
For electives, my school would let you do them anywhere. Some hospitals provide housing for visiting students whereas others don't. You might have to find short term housing if you insist on doing an away rotation. There is a website out there for medical students looking for short term housing options. I never used it, but it exists, heh.
