Fourth year speciality advice

[texas2011]

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Okay I need some ideas. I have a required speciality medicine month to do in fourth year. School is finally allowing us to do it in a peds speciality. So what speciality do you feel would be most beneficial. Available specialities are allergy, cards, GI, heme/onc, pulm, endocrine, neurology. So what speciality will help most with intern year? what speciality would be the most fun? the most procedures?

 

[BigNavyPedsGuy]

Okay I need some ideas. I have a required speciality medicine month to do in fourth year. School is finally allowing us to do it in a peds speciality. So what speciality do you feel would be most beneficial. Available specialities are allergy, cards, GI, heme/onc, pulm, endocrine, neurology. So what speciality will help most with intern year? what speciality would be the most fun? the most procedures?

I would say ID, but it's not a choice. If you get to do inpatient Heme/Onc it would probably prepare you the most for intern year. You'll manage a lot of sick kids and will be less likely to be scared when you face them as an intern.

Endo and allergy are likely mostly outpatient.

Of the ones you've listed, I would have to say Heme/Onc will give the most educational value.

 

[ForbiddenComma]

My school did not have peds cards as an available rotation (boooo), but IM cards was easily my best MS4 rotation in terms of educational value. You've got clinic, you've got regular inpatient, you've got critical care inpatient, and you've got cool procedures. This is true of peds cards as well, so I would highly recommend it.

 

[J-Rad]

Assuming that you are going into peds (or an FM program with a robust inpatient peds component): Heme/Onc is useful for what BNPG mentioned. Endo is also good as there are many admissions to gen peds for management of DKA/diabetes (and not all DKA cases get admitted to the PICU). Getting comfortable with that is very helpful. On the outpatient side, they do a lot of workups that a general pediatrician should know how to do (short stature, DM, thyroid stuff, etc). I also think a cards rotation is very valuable. You would be surprised how many peds residents/pediatricians are uncomfortable with their auscultation skills or the prospect of dealing with a cardiac kid. It can be amazing how much a rotation in cards, evn as an MS, can help esp. with the former. Those are my top three on your list (if you're going peds and it had been on your list, I would have also put a neo rotation down as on the top 4)

 

[texas2011]

submitted preference list. 1. ID 2. Heme/Onc

yes I would like to do neo rotation but sadly not available. I plan on doing a pedi cards month towards the end of the year.

Great Advice

Another question? What would be a good subspeciality rotation for away/audition rotation purposes. I ask this because many instituitions either do not allow or don't have space for visiting students to do ped sub I's.

 

[umass rower]

Another question? What would be a good subspeciality rotation for away/audition rotation purposes. I ask this because many instituitions either do not allow or don't have space for visiting students to do ped sub I's.

I'd suggest doing a rotation that gets you some inpatient experience with the specialty. The reason for this is that most specialty rotations are focused around the clinic, and if you never get out of a specialty's clinic, nobody will ever know you were there. If you can get out on the floors, you will get a chance to meet other attendings and some of the residents, and simply being recognizable and a "known quantity" is often a very important aspect to getting better consideration for a residency. You may have to do some research to find out which specialties are a busier at which institutions, because it may not be the same everywhere. For example, my medical school had one of the busier and better-known CF programs in the country, meaning Pulm pretty much always had kids in-house, whereas where I'm now doing my residency, one of the Pulm attendings occasionally pretty much consults herself on patients out of boredom.

 

[texas2011]

So this rotation specifically is at my home school which does not have a pediatrics residency so I am not worried about that.

The ID rotation and for that matter most of our subspecialty rotations are usually about 25% inpatient and 75% outpatient

The audition rotations I have set up are entirely inpatient, some being subI's in general peds and some being subspecialty inpatient ward teams.

 

[texas2011]

I'd suggest doing a rotation that gets you some inpatient experience with the specialty. The reason for this is that most specialty rotations are focused around the clinic, and if you never get out of a specialty's clinic, nobody will ever know you were there. If you can get out on the floors, you will get a chance to meet other attendings and some of the residents, and simply being recognizable and a "known quantity" is often a very important aspect to getting better consideration for a residency. You may have to do some research to find out which specialties are a busier at which institutions, because it may not be the same everywhere. For example, my medical school had one of the busier and better-known CF programs in the country, meaning Pulm pretty much always had kids in-house, whereas where I'm now doing my residency, one of the Pulm attendings occasionally pretty much consults herself on patients out of boredom.

Thanks for this advice...any advice from current residents is greatly appreciated by 4th years who are beginning the beast that is the match. Keep it coming this is good stuff. And I have noticed lately a few threads that all have different input related to residency match...thought maybe a Residency 101 sticky might be in order