Family Medicine elective requirement for Ortho Resdiency?

[RussianJoo]

A friend of mine asked me to post this question for him. We don't have Family medicine as a required rotation in our medical school and he's having difficulty finding an open rotation. He's going to be applying for Ortho in the 2010 match. Is a family medicine rotation a requirement for some Ortho programs? He heard somewhere that it was or it was good to have but he's not 100% sure if this is correct.

So does anyone know is it a requirement to do a family practice rotation to match into Ortho? Will he be able to match into Ortho without a family medicine rotation?

thank you in advance for your replies.

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[Buckeye(OH)]

Wait, I thought ALL med schools required at least one rotation in FP?

 

[RussianJoo]

not ours. it can be taken as an elective if you choose to but he didn't sign up soon enough and will have to travel to another state to do it.

So does he need it or will he be able to match with out it? You don't need family med rotations to get licensed in most states so it's not a big deal to not have it.

 

[Sureshot83]

My school does have a required MS3 family med rotation, but I can't imagine any ortho program would actually care whether or not you have it. When they interview you, they basically look at your third year grades as a whole, with usually a little more emphasis on surgery, and possibly also internal medicine.

That said, if your friend has "heard" that some programs require it, he should find out which programs these are, look at their websites for application requirements, and if there are still any doubts, call/email the residency coordinator. Or he could just check this out for all the programs he is planning to apply to.

 

[darkmansaad]

some states require it, i know for a fact california does and almost positive texas...it varies but i would err on the side of caution...

 

[Sureshot83]

some states require it, i know for a fact california does and almost positive texas...it varies but i would err on the side of caution...

OK, so this would be a state-wide requirement then, not a program-specific requirement. That may be possible. If this is the case, I maintain what I said before - the ortho program probably doesn't care too much about your family med grade, but they would be doing so only because they have to.

Also note that this would then apply to all residencies in all programs within those states, not just ortho.

 

[RussianJoo]

Thanks for your feedback guys. He knows about the states that require family med, and doesn't care about them because he doesn't plan on ever living there or practicing there. I think he might have heard a rumor that it's a requirement or something good to have on your transcript. Don't know why it would matter unless that state required it for licensing.

I'll let him know that it was just a rumor and he shouldn't worry about it.

thanks again.