There are about three reasons to do an away rotation:
1. To evaluate a program that you would like to match at.
2. To see how another plastic surgery training program operates (other than your own home program).
3. To try to get a letter of recommendation.
Most of this advice assumes that you come from a med school with a plastic surgery training program. If you don't have a residency where you go to med school, then you will probably try to do more aways to broaden your exposure to bigger-name surgeons (ie. important chairmen/program directors) to try and get letters, impress, etc...
Rotation considerations to think about:
-which places are the new hotness and have lots of rotating students
-which have the best/newest curricula
-amount of general surgery vs. true plastic surgery time (always a hot topic)
-most operative independence
-recon vs. aesthetic volume
-actual vs. perceived malignancy (ie. how hard do you actually work)(
-timing of rotation (faculty often go on vacation in the summer months, November may be too late to help you with interview invites)
Also influencing your decision is how many aways to do. I believe that one is good, two is ok, but three or more is too many unless you don't have a home program.
Since most people (myself certainly included back when I matched) have the mindset that matching integrated plastics alone is a tough job that is getting tougher by the year, picking potentials by geography alone is tough. Most of us applied broadly/everywhere and some get lucky enough with numbers of interviews to try and let geography play a role in matching.
Keep in mind that many of your eager and forward-thinking potential matchmates were scoping out aways months ago, and that popular places often have limited numbers of spots that fill up quickly.
Sifting through the chaff of what I've said already, here is how I went about choosing aways and how I'd go about selecting yours:
1. Pick one school that is like your home program in setup- a similar academic center vs. community/volume/case distribution and one that is different.
2. Choose one on geography where you'd like to end up (just another reason why sunny Stanford is so popular) and another less-desirable but still acceptable place. Remember, integrated plastics is tough and you can live anywhere for six or seven years.
3. Talk to your mentor (you already found a mentor, right?) about which places are doing well academically, which provide solid training, which programs are on the rise and which may be in for large personnel changes over the next several years.
4. Contact the places high on your list and apply for rotations, trying to figure out which have dates acceptable to your home med school and the visiting program's.
5. Start reading plastics now if you haven't already.
6. Do a home rotation in plastics between now and August or so.
7. Do 1-2 aways between August and Octoberish.
8. Prepare your application: buff your CV, publish whatever you can, take a research month or two and hammer out some sort of project, case review, start thinking about personal statements and the interview trail. Do this earlier than you think you should because once you start the all-consuming plastics months, application deadlines come faster than you'd think.
And finally, Bill Kuzon said it best when he said that any good reconstructive surgeon can be a great aesthetic surgeon.
bb
