Congratulations on defending
🙂
I was wondering how much material from years 1 and 2 will show up again on the clerkship exams.
Almost none that isn't covered by the books for the clerkships. You're almost never tested on that stuff directly.
Should I dust off First Aid/Goljan to review the high yield nuggets or do the clerkship review books cover EVERYTHING including the need-to-know stuff from the basic sciences? For those who scored well, what do you recommend?
The clerkship review books cover everything. Clinical shelf exams are a lot different from basic science exams. It's a lot of, here's a presentation--what's the disease? Or, here's a presentation, what do you do next? Or what disease/outcome is associated with what we just described? That sort of thing. Yes there is a lot of pathology, but it'll be re-covered. You'll be surprised at how much your MD classmates also forgot.
The biggest challenge on shelfs is the length and the time you have to complete them. For each rotation there should be some shelf-like practice questions you can do to get a sense of this, and this is a common topic of discussion both at school and on the clinical rotations forum. But really, your lack of basic science knowledge almost never comes up directly. There can be a good amount of pharm, but it's often about knowing the side effects of the drugs or interactions. This is typically covered in the review material as well. Physio tends to be softball stuff that isn't hard to figure out. There's some basic epi that comes up here and there, but I find it really easy. Some stuff will just come totally out of left field for everyone.
Anatomy questions rarely come up, and when they do on exams it's for a reason. I mean sure, on surgery people kept mentioning this freaking Artery of Ademkewicz. I'm like Artery of wtf?! All you actually have to know is they sometimes destroy it in AAA repairs, which leads to anterior spinal cord syndrome.
Now you might get pimped often on basic science material. God help you. Some attendings understood I had this stuff a long time ago, and some got really pissed at me for making that excuse. But at my school at least clinical honors are more about luck (I think biggest factor for me), an extremely high shelf exam score, smiling, pretending to be really interested, volunteering to do as much as possible, etc... As long as you put in effort, not knowing some trivia here and there isn't a problem.
On a different subject, have any of you worked with an advisor who had it in their mind that they could summon you back to the lab for an experiment once in a while? Another guy joined our lab last summer (MD grad doing a few years of research) and will be staying on for a second year. When he came aboard, my advisor attached him to me, and I spent a great deal of time teaching him all the lab techniques. Now that I am leaving, he is supposed to finish my ongoing experiments for my second paper; for these efforts, he will be the second author on the pub. Nevertheless, my pushy advisor has mentioned more than once "Well you can always come back on a weekend to do another transplant." Maybe this is my post-thesis state of mind, but right now I feel like that is the last thing on earth I would want to do. Spending 8 hrs on a Saturday harvesting organs from mice is not on my radar for any point during this coming year where I am already starting out behind the pack. Right now, my inclination is to categorically decline any requests during 3rd year, leaving open the option to come back as a 4th year if the paper has been delayed. Am I being inflexible? Have any of you done this sort of thing? Does it clarify the situation if I tell you my advisor is douchey & self-centered and the thought of peeling out of the lab makes my soul rejoice?
I had similar issues. My PI would routinely call any former MD/PhD students and current research residents lazy if they wouldn't come to lab at his beck and call. If I told him they were working 80 hours a week, he'd still say 80 hours wasn't enough and that we were all being lazy. Meanwhile the PIs in my and neighboring labs work <40 hours a week. I always put in 60-80 hour weeks, including a lot of nights which was the only time I could get the equipment, to the complete detriment of my relationships and personal life. The PIs and even post-docs felt that it was the students who should do this kind of work, because they are past that stage and they have families now.
😕
I did catagorically decline to come back to lab while in clerkships. I made a very clean break, but I pissed them off very badly in the process. This can be bad because you're still trying to get a residency LOR out of your lab! My school even requests comments from your thesis committe chair, who refuses to write anything for me because I was assertive about getting myself defended and out of there. Never pick a thesis committee chair who is close to your PI.
My best advice is to be professional, aka passive-aggressive, about it. Say yeah ok maybe. Then pretend like you're always too busy. Don't actually decline, just say oh sorry this weekend I have X going on. In my case they keep scheduling these important experiments for the middle of the day in the middle of the week and ask me to show up. WTF?! Like any rotation is just going to let me go.
Overall it's a very difficult balance, because in this game you have to please too many people.
Will the balance work to my advantage?
All the regular MD students are scared and will be lost on wards too. Don't sweat it. IMO, you're not really at a disadvantage.
