Interesting elective clerkships / experiences?

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Rising MS2 here. To distract myself from summer boards prep, I have been looking up unique away-electives and other experiences for third and fourth year students. Here are a few I've found:
  • NASA Aerospace Medicine Clerkship: Four week nonclinical elective learning about medicine and physiology in space. Students get tours of the facility, attend lectures hosted by flight surgeons and aerospace scientists. Appears somewhat competitive as applicants are meant to have a "demonstrated interest in aerospace medicine"; culminates in a research project.
  • Austen-Riggs Psychodynamic Psychiatry Elective: Four weeks of inpatient psychiatry at Austen-Riggs, a luxurious, private psychiatric hospital known for its training in classical psychoanalysis. Students become familiar with psychoanalytic theory while participating in group and one-on-one therapy sessions.
  • FASPE: This program calls itself a "fellowship" but it's really just a two-week intensive ethics seminar at Auschwitz. Students learn about ethics (with the Holocaust providing historical context) in small groups and lectures. Apparently very competitive? Most alumni are from T10 schools or dual-enrolled in bioethics grad programs.
Those are all I've found for now. Previous threads also mention a JAMA medical editing elective and a wilderness medicine clerkship at Big Sky Resort in Montana, but my research suggests these may not be active.

Do you know of other unique electives for medical students? Have you participated in any of the above? I'd love to hear more.

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RIP to big sky Montana :( I tried looking for similar programs but never found one
 
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The FASPE fellowship is ultra competitive and not really accessible to anyone without an extensive bioethics background. They have like 15 spots and receive >400 applications. I applied twice to that thing despite having years of college and med school bioethics experience and didn't even make it to the interview stage. I'm curious if anyone here has been accepted and has any insight into their admissions process?

For those looking for research-oriented electives, the NIH runs the Clinical Electives Program at their main campus in Bethesda, MD. It runs the gamut of common clinical electives, and there are 5 specific electives with built-in research projects and run for 3 months. Unfortunately it doesn't offer a stipend or otherwise subsidize the cost of moving and living there, but perhaps not a bad option for those whose home institutions don't offer those same opportunities.
 
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The FASPE fellowship is ultra competitive and not really accessible to anyone without an extensive bioethics background. They have like 15 spots and receive >400 applications. I applied twice to that thing despite having years of college and med school bioethics experience and didn't even make it to the interview stage. I'm curious if anyone here has been accepted and has any insight into their admissions process?

For those looking for research-oriented electives, the NIH runs the Clinical Electives Program at their main campus in Bethesda, MD. It runs the gamut of common clinical electives, and there are 5 specific electives with built-in research projects and run for 3 months. Unfortunately it doesn't offer a stipend or otherwise subsidize the cost of moving and living there, but perhaps not a bad option for those whose home institutions don't offer those same opportunities.
I think my classmate participated...they were getting a Masters in bioethics alongside their MD, though.
 
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The FASPE fellowship is ultra competitive and not really accessible to anyone without an extensive bioethics background. They have like 15 spots and receive >400 applications. I applied twice to that thing despite having years of college and med school bioethics experience and didn't even make it to the interview stage. I'm curious if anyone here has been accepted and has any insight into their admissions process?
Thank you for your perspective; I've asked SDN about this program before to no avail. I'm also interested in FASPE but the obvious academic elitism is a turn-off. It's odd that the program seems to privilege students with prior bioethics experience, as they claim repeatedly that they want to avoid "preaching to the choir" and encourage people without significant philosophy/ethics backgrounds to apply.

Oh well. Maybe I'll apply to Yale's summer bioethics program instead?
 
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Thank you for your perspective; I've asked SDN about this program before to no avail. I'm also interested in FASPE but the obvious academic elitism is a turn-off. It's odd that the program seems to privilege students with prior bioethics experience, as they claim repeatedly that they want to avoid "preaching to the choir" and encourage people without significant philosophy/ethics backgrounds to apply.

Oh well. Maybe I'll apply to Yale's summer bioethics program instead?
To be honest, I have no idea what FASPE looks for. The youtube link you posted is for FASPE Law, so maybe the selection criteria for FASPE medical is different? Looking at their accepted Fellows, every year is dominated by students from elite medical schools (T10 to T20), so my assumption is that it helps to be affiliated with a prestigious bioethics department. Keep in mind you will need two letters and two references from faculty, so I assume it helps to have connections. The bioethics director at my school (mid-tier) says many people have applied over the years and nobody has ever been accepted.

Another thing to note is that FASPE is super competitive because it is fully funded and covers all costs of traveling/lodging. This is pretty rare in the bioethics world because there unfortunately isn't much money in medical humanities. The Yale summer institute is something I had considered also, as well as the Hastings Center in NY, but both of these require payment and I didn't think it was worth it (Yale's thing costs over $2000).
 
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