fourth year clinical rotations

[palbsss]

When setting up your electives, do you have to do them in hospitals that are affiliated with your school, or can you choose any hospital that agrees to have you?(example- if going to western U/comp would it be possible to set up rotations at UCSD / ucla/ loma lina linda etc... hospitals?). If so, what criteria would the hospitals use to choose if they should accept you (i.e class rank, COMLEX/USMLE score, etc...?) Also, for your electives, can you choose any subspecialty you want such as neuro, rad, ortho, opth etc... or does it have to be more of the primary care fields such as IM, peds, em... etc. The information is greatly appreciated.

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[QuinnB]

actually, it mostly depends on YOUR home institution and where they will let you go. Most schools will take people in most specialties IF you are on the ball and set up the elective early by getting into contact with the school's department.

 

[deleted109597]

If you aren't a 3rd year, then this doesn't matter.
If you are a 3rd yeard, and your school hasn't bothered to explain any of this to you, tell them you want a refund.
But yes, it depends on what your school lets you do versus what it makes you do.

 

[babyruth]

Agree with above, your school should explain this to you. Most hospitals are affiliated with a medica school and so will let you do electives through their program by filling out an application and jumping through a certain number of hoops. You can go to the hospital website to find out this information and their affilations.

 

[NNguyenMD]

When setting up your electives, do you have to do them in hospitals that are affiliated with your school, or can you choose any hospital that agrees to have you?(example- if going to western U/comp would it be possible to set up rotations at UCSD / ucla/ loma lina linda etc... hospitals?). If so, what criteria would the hospitals use to choose if they should accept you (i.e class rank, COMLEX/USMLE score, etc...?) Also, for your electives, can you choose any subspecialty you want such as neuro, rad, ortho, opth etc... or does it have to be more of the primary care fields such as IM, peds, em... etc. The information is greatly appreciated.

Q1.When setting up your electives, do you have to do them in hospitals that are affiliated with your school, or can you choose any hospital that agrees to have you?

As a fourth year student you can do electives are any institution/hospital that accepts "extern" medical students from other institutions, and have such rotations for away students to participate in. However, your school will also have to approve those electives if you want to get credit for them. At my school all we need to do is to get an add/drop form signed by the chairman of the department in the specialty we're doing the elective in.


Away electives are easy to set-up with regard to signing up, just a matter of submitting transcripts, health documents, vaccination records. However, they are difficult in that you have to go through the trouble of finding housing there, figuring out transportation, etc, etc, etc.

Q2. If so, what criteria would the hospitals use to choose if they should accept you (i.e class rank, COMLEX/USMLE score, etc...?)

The two places I did away electives at, LAC/USC and Cedars-Sinai, seemed to be concerned with the following, 1)are you a senior at an LCME medical college (aka US/Canadian MD/DO medical college), 2)are you in good standing with your medical college, 3)pay the application fee. There really wasn't much else to it. The rest of it is really about availiability, since the hospitals need to cater to their home students first, before they can fit you in.

Q3. Also, for your electives, can you choose any subspecialty you want such as neuro, rad, ortho, opth etc... or does it have to be more of the primary care fields such as IM, peds, em

If they have an elective in it, you can do it as long as they allow extern students to sign up for them. And from what I remember, they have electives in just about everything.

 

[stretch210]

It seems that you guys are stressing the fact that you MUST be a fourth year student to do an "away" or "audition" rotation? I thought as a third year student you could do these as well? No?

Thanks.

 

[Adcadet]

Well, my school actually makes almost zero distinction between third and fourth years, so it's all program dependent. Usually you do your core third year rotations at home and late third year or early fourth year do away rotations at places you're interested in going to for residency. By then you'll know what specialty you want to do and have some vague idea of where you might want to go. Also, you won't be a bumbling third year idiot who doesn't know an INR from an ICU. Some people chose to rotation at a different place just to see something different, but I'm guessing this is relatively rare. I feel lucky in that I've gotten to rotate through 8 different hospitals here at my home institution, and would highly recommend students do an away rotation, if you can, to see something different if their school restricts you to one or two hospital settings.

I rotated at the Mayo Clinic, and they seemed much more selective than others - I needed a LOR, transcript, personal statement, CV, and research summary. No application fee, though. Mayo must require much more paperwork than any other place - certainly more than any of the other locations I looked into rotating at.

 

[stretch210]

One more question...when does everyone recommend contacting these "away" rotation sites for late third year and early fourth year rotations?

I'm a second year now, when should I start calling around?

 

[Adcadet]

If I remember, most deadlines were March-May. I would start looking before Christmas of your third year, so you can send the applications out in Jan-March of your third year. But don't take my word for it - if you know you're interested in a particular place, look up the deadline now. If you don't know of any place in particular, look up the deadline at a good number to get an idea.