bump, any new opinions on med student elective rotations?
So, I did my away at UC davis EM. You work 11 12-hr shifts total in the same ED. Lectures on the first day only and done! so, you pretty much have a lot of free time. Pathology is diverse. Decent number of Spanish only speaking patients. Decent number of procedures you perform as med students. Dr. Laurin is clerkship director. He is probably the nicest person there. For the rest of faculty, it's 50:50 nice vs mean attending at least to med students. I feel some are not nice to students because they have to write up H&P once you pick up a patient. Their computer system doesn't allow students to write notes. So, basically, you're like looking at your attending's face when you pick up new patient. The busier the ED, the meaner the attendings are. It is actually true to a lot of other programs too. Upper level residents are generally nice, but they are busy and couldn't help you much. I'd like to share a bad instance during my rotation. One day, I worked with Dr Tyler who has a thick Australian accent and speaks fast. She started treating me like **** when I didn't understand what she was saying in the beginning. And the rest of the day working with her was miserable just because again, you gotta look at your attending face when you picked up a new patient. As much as she speaks fast, she is a slow typer, which made it even worse. No offense to her or UCD EM program. I actually had some great experiences while working there too. You do a lot of suturing. Some are really complicated lacs. A lot of scut work you can do, such as foley and IV's. They are good practice for med students.
So, to summarize my opinions (purely just mine, which might not represent others who rotated there):
The goods: busy ED with diverse pathology, California, 3 year, lots of procedures
The not-so-goods: little commodore seen among residents, poor resident-to-med student teaching, computer system issues (attending must write notes if you pick up patients)
