How many weeks of internal med?

[Deepa100]

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Our school sets up students with 2 months of IM rotations and out of the 8 weeks, weeks is required. I just changed my schedule to remove the second month but now I am wondering if there is somthing to gain (with boards esp) by doing8 weeks of back-to-back IM rotations.

Can someone help me with this? I sure would appreciate it.

 

[SmokD]

I think you left something out, I'm assuming you meant to say only 4 weeks are required. Personally I think theres always something to be gained and if you schedule your time properly you'll have time for the boards.

 

[PokerDoc]

my school does 12 weeks.. its excessively awful... anyway, doing medicine as my last rotation made step 2 studying much easier.

 

[Bacchus]

I thought I was learning a lot on medicine and this was confirmed when I took my end-of-the-rotation exam. There were definitely questions asked that I got the answers to from rotating, but not studying. When you say 8 weeks, do you mean no specialization at all? I'm doing 12 weeks of "internal medicine" but 4 weeks is cardiology and another 4 is pulmonology.

 

[Deepa100]

Thanks for your responses.
4 wks of Internal Medicine is required by my school. I know we work 12 hr days so I think I will learn a lot by just doing 4 wks. I do have 4 wks of Cardiology which is also supposed to be pretty intense. I currently do not have Pulmonology/GI/Nephrology but I will ask about it.

 

[JustSomePreMed]

I thought I was learning a lot on medicine and this was confirmed when I took my end-of-the-rotation exam. There were definitely questions asked that I got the answers to from rotating, but not studying. When you say 8 weeks, do you mean no specialization at all? I'm doing 12 weeks of "internal medicine" but 4 weeks is cardiology and another 4 is pulmonology.

We have 12 weeks of Internal Medicine. Eight weeks of general medicine services (two one-month rotations with different services and/or different hospitals) and 4 weeks of outpatient/ambulatory.

 

[justdoit31]

We had 8 weeks of Internal- 4 at our main hospital, 2 at the VA and 2 weeks in subspecialties (you pick 2 from a list of choices). Call is q4 at our main hospital, q3 at the VA and no call on sub-weeks.

 

[MossPoh]

We have 8 weeks total during third year. 6 weeks is outpatient and 2 weeks is inpatient. We then have a month "advanced internal medicine" during 4th year that is all in patient.

I'm on psych now, followed by family med (6 weeks) and 6 weeks of outpatient internal medicine with a community medicine rotation in between. It is going to be death by outpatient.

 

[AlexMorph]

12 weeks, 8 inpatient 4 outpatient

 

[olemissbabydoc]

8 weeks - 4 on "House" (our home hospital) and 4 at the VA. We also have a family medicine rotation that is 6 weeks - 2 in another area hospital and 4 in a rural location.

 

[Rollo]

I thought I was learning a lot on medicine and this was confirmed when I took my end-of-the-rotation exam. There were definitely questions asked that I got the answers to from rotating, but not studying. When you say 8 weeks, do you mean no specialization at all? I'm doing 12 weeks of "internal medicine" but 4 weeks is cardiology and another 4 is pulmonology.

Yep, we do total 12 weeks of "Internal Medicine"...4 weeks is inpatient (some sites it's mixed inpatient + outpatient), 4 weeks cardiology, and 4 weeks you get to pick a specialty within internal medicine or you can choose to do 4 more weeks of inpatient general internal medicine.

IM really is one of the best rotations to learn clinical medicine. And the material you learn on IM can be beneficial regardless of which specialty you're interested in because you're bound to run into bread and butter cases of IM in other specialties such as HTN, DM, CHF, COPD, malignancy, etc. Learning the basics behind these and a little about their management is absolutely necessary (as evidenced by Step 2).

 

[KarateSocks]

10 weeks total
1 week is orientation - most of it is a freaking joke - basically it's a week to goof off.
then 3 blocks of 3 weeks each. one if them is some sort of outpatient experience, at least one is general medicine, and the other you can either do more gen med or have your pic of cards, nephro, or pulm.

 

[Dawkter]

Ours is 12 weeks. I feel like I have aged 20 years since it started.

 

[olemissbabydoc]

Ours is 12 weeks. I feel like I have aged 20 years since it started.

Ditto. I HATE IM.

 

[RySerr21]

im jealous to those of you who get subspecialty exposure. We do 8 general inpatient and 4 of ambulatory. No subspecialties. We have to take a shelf after each.

 

[MossPoh]

im jealous to those of you who get subspecialty exposure. We do 8 general inpatient and 4 of ambulatory. No subspecialties. We have to take a shelf after each.

I got all excited when they said we'd get 2 weeks of subspecialty. I then found out they did that because they didn't have enough internists volunteer as preceptors for outpatient. Since then, they have found more and I do not get any subspecialty exposure. I think it is kind of crappy to not give a taste..for us, that is only about 7 days worth..maybe more if you get to come in on weekends.

 

[Bacchus]

Its interesting you guys don't get subspecialty exposure. It seems people I've talked to usually have a neuro rotation. I haven't talked to anyone that has a mandatory cardio rotation like we do. 12 weeks of straight medicine would kill 🙁 although if I had to do that, I'd prefer inpatient probably.

 

[RySerr21]

Its interesting you guys don't get subspecialty exposure. It seems people I've talked to usually have a neuro rotation. I haven't talked to anyone that has a mandatory cardio rotation like we do. 12 weeks of straight medicine would kill 🙁 although if I had to do that, I'd prefer inpatient probably.

we have 4 weeks of neuro as a separate rotation with a separate shelf.

 

[MossPoh]

4th year we have "advanced internal medicine" and then we get to choose subspecialty stuff. I go to a primary care oriented school, so they have a real thing for making us do outpatient stuff. We beat the national average by quite a bit on step 2 scores, but I suspect that is more because of our degree of autonomy relative to other schools.