Electives

[mdfirst]

HOw many electives are u allowed to take in 3rd year, outside of the required clerkships?
How many electives/sub-internships/away rotations are allowed in 3rd and 4th year?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[FutureInternist]

Each school has a different requirement. Talk to your school's Clinical Education Dept

 

[QofQuimica]

HOw many electives are u allowed to take in 3rd year, outside of the required clerkships?
How many electives/sub-internships/away rotations are allowed in 3rd and 4th year?

This is totally school-specific, so you should ask the clinical coordinator at your school like the previous poster suggested. Some schools allow students to take electives (or even sub-Is) during third year, while others don't. Some schools don't even require sub-Is, while others require two or three of them. So you really need to ask someone who is knowledgeable about the curriculum at your specific school. Best of luck.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Don't know exactly what the op wanted, but I'd be interested in hearing about how much elective time during 3rd year people have at different schools. You can't really judge one school's curriculum without knowing how others do it.

I'll start. My school gives us 4 weeks of selective time during 3rd year. You can do either 2 2 week selectives or 1 4 week selective. The 4 week selectives are anesthesiology and EM. 2 week selectives include derm, radiology, urology, ent, ortho and ophthalmology. The downsides are that you have to select a schedule with a 4 week selective spot to do either EM or anes, and you need either medicine or surgery or both as prereqs for most of the selectives.

 

[MrBurns10]

We have two 2-week selectives and one 4-week elective. There are a lot of different options offered, and you can do the 4-week elective abroad if you want (I had 2 classmates go to Alaska, one did cardiology in Scotland, 2 went to Jamaica, etc). And if you choose one of the critical care electives (EM, SICU, MICU), you fulfill that requirement for 4th year.

I'd say we're both pretty lucky, Dr Bagel. I've heard of a lot of schools that don't give any elective time until 4th year, which makes zero sense to me.

 

[lord_jeebus]

My school had no electives during 3rd year, although the Surgery rotation included 2 three-week blocks of surgical specialties (no ophtho).

I've heard they're going to change this though.

 

[Ashers]

My school has 1 month of elective or vacation M3 year. If we take a graded elective we get 3 months of vacation M4 year. There are a lot we can choose from M3 year, but not as many as 4th year.

We have to do a total of 5 electives, and basically up to 3 can be aways our 4th year. We've also got an "integrated selective" a medical sub-I, surgical sub-I, and some more internal medicine requirements.

 

[geekOCD]

At my school it depends what you consider the end of 3rd year I guess (it gets blurry) If you judge it by when you're done w/ mandatory rotations, I'll be a 4th year in March. If you go by the traditional may/june timeline, then I'll have ~4 months of open electives (no limits/rules) during 3rd year. I know we're on the extreme side of the spectrum, but I'm not sure how you're supposed to really figure out what you want to do (let alone set up away rotations and shine in them) if you have no electives (or only a month) during 3rd year [at least if you want to do something beyond one of the core specialties that everyone does rotations in].

 

[swman]

Our school gives us one 6 week block for electives. Unfortunately most electives we are able to take have prerequisites, ie completion of medicine or surgery, so if your elective block is early in the year you can't really take anything except for a 2 week anesthesiology elective - so they end up becoming vacation slots for many. I for one used it up at the beginning for Step 1 studying then a small vacation.

 

[BigRedBeta]

Don't know exactly what the op wanted, but I'd be interested in hearing about how much elective time during 3rd year people have at different schools. You can't really judge one school's curriculum without knowing how others do it.

No "elective" time during M3...at least in manner in which you guys are using it. But I do think my school does a good job getting us to see a variety of fields during the third year.

During surgery, we get to do two 2-week selectives from a decent size list including: trauma, ER, transplant, optho, ENT, ortho, peds, pedi ortho, urology, pedi urology, and neurosurg. There might be a few others I've left out.

Our Peds clerkship has been changed since I went through it, so I don't know all the details exactly. There's an option to do a community based track that's 1 week of newborn nursery and then 7 weeks of outpatient clinic. The university track includes a week (two?) of a specialty selective.

Psych has 3 required components: 3 weeks of inpatient, 1 week of substance abuse, and 2 weeks of outpatient in which they generally try to rotate you through a variety of settings - child, PTSD, etc.

OB/GYN: no choice in the matter, but we do 2 weeks of L&D, 1 week GYN ONC, 1 week GYN Surgery, and 2 weeks outpatient clinic.

IM has a 3 week selective - neuro, ID, Pulm, GI, rheum, hem/onc and DEM (no cardiology for M3's), or time in the VA "admitting area" (since the VA is not a true ER), or with a private practice clinician in the community.

Family, we go to rural towns throughout the state for 8 weeks, and the docs out there usually let you do as much as you want. Some locations are a little more structured than others, but it's generally a well received clerkship.

There's not any vacation in the third year outside of the school wide designated breaks.

Fourth year, we have no required sub-I's (though most people do at least one), but we do have one required basic science elective month.