How does your school schedule M3 clerkships?

[Abilene85]

---

Members do not see this ad.

My school is in the process of changing the way that students are assigned/choose required clerkships for the third year. Several students seem to think that most other schools do a lottery system, giving individuals the most control over their schedule (at least those with good lottery numbers). So I'm curious, what process does your school use for creating clerkship schedules for the third year, when we're all doing mostly the same required clerkships?

Is it assigned? Do you get to choose? Is it done online or on paper? When does the process start and when do you find out what your individual schedule will be?

Thanks.

 

[Vonsmack]

We got to choose our preference for the order we wanted, and a lottery would be used if there weren't enough slots for that order of rotations. That made sense to me, even though I did get my second choice. Other schools do a straight up lottery, and that probably works out the same. I've heard some schools have the highest rank students pick first. No order of rotations is perfect for everyone, so there is a decent chance no matter what selection method your school uses you'll probably end up with something that works for you.

 

[spospo]

we do straight up lottery (next week!). there are a total of 6 choices, you put your name in some sort of bowl type thing(?), they call your name, you choose. as was said, we all have our own reasoning for choosing a certain schedule, so a lot of people do get what they want

 

[Depakote]

We have a 144 person Goldeneye (Nintendo 64) tournament. Pistols, license to kill, library. M3 clerkship preference is given to the winner and then by order of elimination.

 

[Pontifex Maximus]

Rank em, computer based lottery, then an online forum to set up swaps for a few weeks. Simple.

 

[veenut]

We have a 144 person Goldeneye (Nintendo 64) tournament. Pistols, license to kill, library. M3 clerkship preference is given to the winner and then by order of elimination.

That's ******ed.

Proximity mines in the Archives, obviously. Anything else is just nonsense.

 

[CorazonDoc]

Our school is kind of lame. Students rank the order they want to do their 3rd year rotations in. Registrar tries to accommodate everyone. Many people happy, others not so much. 4th year electives are scheduled by a lottery.

I think the Golden Eye tourn would lead to remarkably better results. Less students complaining, etc. It's hard to complain about not getting the electives you want if the reason is you got pistol-whipped by one of your classmates in a video game.

 

[Blesbok]

Our school bases it on number of hair follicles on the left index finger.

 

[nlax30]

We have a 144 person Goldeneye (Nintendo 64) tournament. Pistols, license to kill, library. M3 clerkship preference is given to the winner and then by order of elimination.

Brilliant.... I've been having a craving to play that lately *sigh* I miss my N64.


Anywho, for our 3rd/4th year the class is split up into 13 groups of about 10-12 people each. Each group has a slightly different rotation schedule and vacation month so at any given time, for example, maybe only a few/couple groups are on IM/FP/Vacation/etc at the same time.

At the end of our 1st year we fill out a survey where we pick our preference of whether we'd prefer a specific rotation schedule or specific location. Location part may not play a role at most MD schools as you probably have a main teaching hospital close by where you'll do most of you required rotations. Ours are kinda of scattered so if you'd rather stay here locally then you choose location, if you'd rather have vacation in say, December, then you choose that group/schedule as your preference.

Then some magic happens and everyone gets put into groups trying to accommodate people's preferences. We just switched to some online blackboard type portal system for scheduling so to pick our required rotations we just had to log on and pick amongst all the affiliated hospitals/physicians. Technically we can basically do just about any of our rotations anywhere we'd like so if I want to do an IM month with Dr. X and he's not on that list then it's just some extra paperwork that needs to be filled out and turned in.

But the online system is new so still some bugs that are being worked on. The main thing is how the groups are setup.

 

[nogolfinsnow]

12 separate tracks with a fair amount of overlap among the 12. Rank them 1-12, lottery, then 1 week to switch if you can find someone to accommodate you. Most people end up relatively happy.

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

That's ******ed.

Proximity mines in the Archives, obviously. Anything else is just nonsense.

No way man...You gotta go Automatics and Facility with no radar. The only way to play.

And none of that Oddjob B.S.

 

[45408]

We've got a lottery. You rank your choices, and they start matching them up.

 

[BigRedBeta]

For my school, I think the most important thing they've done is used clustered or sequenced semesters - by that I mean, Internal Med is always with OB/Gyn and Psych (12 weeks/6 weeks/6 weeks), while Surgery, Peds and Family comprise the other semester (all 8 weeks and they always go in the sequence above - if you start with family, you'll have surgery next and peds last). This cuts down on the number of options possible.

From there we essentially get to preference when we want to take Internal Medicine (1, 2, 3, 4) and which clerkship you wish to start with for the other semester. From there, they try to put as many people into the IM block they asked for, and then go from there. It's always frequently mentioned that not everyone will get their first choice.

I think the best aspect of it is that it's ranking, so hopefully if you don't get your first choice, you can still get #2. Again though, the defining aspect is that the semesters are already put together for us. It'd be entirely different if everything was 8 week blocks and thus interchangable.

 

[Jwax]

Wow, I didn't realize how complex some of the school's systems were. For ours, we each get a random lotto number the first week of March for ~140 students. They provide us with templates (same number of templates as students) and once a day in groups of twenty for 2 weeks we go in and select our template in the order of our lotto number. Works well for the top numbers, not as good for the bottom numbers. There are a lot of overlaps in the templates, so the chances are good that we can get something close to what we want. We are allowed to make requests based on "special circumstances" to be given special priority in making our decisions (i.e. if a girl in our class is pregnant and due in December, she'll get a priority to pick a lightweight rotation for November/December/January).

 

[silas2642]

We have a 144 person Goldeneye (Nintendo 64) tournament. Pistols, license to kill, library. M3 clerkship preference is given to the winner and then by order of elimination.

You have no idea how unfair that would be... I would totally get raped... However, that could be fun.

 

[silas2642]

My school is in the process of changing the way that students are assigned/choose required clerkships for the third year. Several students seem to think that most other schools do a lottery system, giving individuals the most control over their schedule (at least those with good lottery numbers). So I'm curious, what process does your school use for creating clerkship schedules for the third year, when we're all doing mostly the same required clerkships?

Is it assigned? Do you get to choose? Is it done online or on paper? When does the process start and when do you find out what your individual schedule will be?

Thanks.

We use the lottery as well. Personally, I think that we should have a beer pong tournament or something, but whatever.

 

[WiscDoc]

Our school has 40 "schedule" options. You rank these schedules, and then a lottery tries to give you as close to your #1 schedule as possible. We should know by mid March. We are allowed to swap individual rotations and complete schedules.

 

[abraxas20]

Three clusters:
1. FM/OBGYN/Inpt Peds/Outpt Peds
2. Surgery/Psych/Neuro
3. IM/ER

Each is four months - leads to twelve possible options (reversing some of the months).

We can either choose a schedule or choose a group of people to rotate with (in which case you can't choose schedule). Then - lottery. Most people are happy I think.

I chose a schedule and got the one I wanted.

 

[meister]

Pretty sad that high school kids probably don't even know what Goldeneye is at this point. Nintendo 64 is but an echo, vanished like a fart in the wind.