Good excuse to do an away rotation near home?

[nope80]

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Hi,

I'm trying to come up with a good reason to let my school do an away rotation near my home - I want to use a professional reason since apparently the "my family is from this area" excuse doesn't work to get permission to do this rotation away from the designated locations. The area I want to go to is a major city while my medical school is out in the country - what are some professional reasons I could use to explain why I want to be in an urban environment? I definitely would love exposure to high risk populations, etc but beyond that I'm not sure how the experience would exactly differ...

Any suggestions?

 

[Law2Doc]

Hi,

I'm trying to come up with a good reason to let my school do an away rotation near my home - I want to use a professional reason since apparently the "my family is from this area" excuse doesn't work to get permission to do this rotation away from the designated locations. The area I want to go to is a major city while my medical school is out in the country - what are some professional reasons I could use to explain why I want to be in an urban environment? I definitely would love exposure to high risk populations, etc but beyond that I'm not sure how the experience would exactly differ...

Any suggestions?

Most schools have rotations at fixed locations and you can't just pick another location, regardless of your reasons. There are insurance and supervision implications to having med students come to a program, so it's not like any old hospital would allow this, even if your school doesn't have an issue. In 4th year most schools allow you apply for away rotations for a month or two for you to "audition" at a program you might want to apply to for residency. There is always an application process involved in this, and it tends to involve the target program's permission and availability of spaces more than that of your home school. So I suggest you wait until fourth year and go through the away rotation process to try to line up a month or so closer to home. To just pick a hospital that your school doesn't have a set rotation/affiliation with otherwise won't work. A rotation is an organized process, not just a shadowing experience, and so unless the school has worked out the details with another location, it won't happen.

 

[nope80]

We actually have an established process for this in our school. We can go to a certain region (they already have connections with the practices/hospitals etc) but the catch is we need to write a letter explaining why.

The main reason I want to go to that area is because my family is from there; however, from the rumors I have heard this is not an excuse that is likely to get me accepted to that area. Therefore, I was trying to come up with other reasons that had to do with the professional aspects - since this is an urban area and my school is in a rural area I was thinking of focusing on this. However, I don't have many specifics in mind and was hoping someone could help me w this.

 

[CCLCMer]

Why don't you try setting up an away elective or AI instead of an away rotation? You'll probably get a lot less resistance, as I found out from personal experience. If you have to be home this year at a certain time for personal reasons, you should find out what your school's policies are for taking vacation or leave time. But if you can wait until you have some elective time, it would probably be a lot easier for you to set up something closer to home then.

 

[45408]

My school gives lots of flexibility in fourth year rotation scheduling - you can doing a number of away rotations, and I don't think they really care where you do them. You have to do core rotations at one of the school's affiliated hospitals, but electives are all up to you. Third year rotations are all pretty well established though - 11 months of mandatory rotations, and 1 month of vacation or elective, and they give you a one page list of the electives that qualify (they're all at the local affiliated hospitals).