How many electives in ur field of choice?

[DO chooser]

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I know this is limited by your school, but how many electives in your field are common? Also tell what your field is please.

MARK

 

[ckent]

Well, it depends on your chosen field and how competetive it is. Most places reccomend that you don't do any more then 2 electives in your chosen field (2 at 2 different hospitals) as you will have plenty of time to learn about them as a resident. However, if you want to do somethingi competetive like urology or neurosurgery or orthopedics, you might want to do 3-4, each at different schools that you are interested in applying for residency to impress the attendings there and increase your chances of admission. A way around this is to do electives with departments that interact with the field that you want to go into, so that you can get to know the attendings, but you end up learning more during your fourth year. For internal medicine and surgery, most people do at least 2 medicine/medicine subspecialty related electives/sub-i's during their fourth year.

 

[drvlad2004]

At NYCOM, you can do 3 electives in your field of choice. I will be doing all 3 of my electives in PM&R. Each one in a different state since I am leaning, very heavily, on doing residency outside of NY. NY, especially Long Island, has become too expensive to live in.

In general, 2 electives in good enough for most people since most students, especially DOs, eventually want to go into a primary care specialty (IM, peds, FP). However, with specialties like PM&R and anesthiology, you do not get any true exposure until 4th year. IThis is why doing 3 electives in the same field is important for someone like me. 4 electives may be excessive unless it is something ultra-competitive like derm and ortho.