Introducing yourself to PD away rotation

[ArkansasHogMD]

Going on an away next month and I am sure I will be attending conferences, grand rounds, etc. Is it acceptable to introduce yourself to the program director? I'm hoping to interview while I'm there to save money on flying back and forth.

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[disorder]

Going on an away next month and I am sure I will be attending conferences, grand rounds, etc. Is it acceptable to introduce yourself to the program director? I'm hoping to interview while I'm there to save money on flying back and forth.

I would like to know this as well.

 

[DrAwsome]

I would like to know this as well.

Well it's likely that you will be working with the PD on the away no? If so I'm sure they'll realize that you are the away rotator for one. 🙂 If not, say hi Dr. so and so, I'm so and so and I'm rotating from Medical school such and such. Nice to meet you. Once you work with him/her and other staff and if things go well you can perhaps toward the end of the rotation schedule a meeting and tell PD how interested you are in the program. I have never personally seen this done though, where a rotator interviews during the rotation. Usually it's a more formal process, especially given the whole inside the match dealio happening now.

Also be careful about away rotations. My away rotation blew up in my face horribly and I did not even get invited to interview 🙁 I was shocked as the PD even wrote me a letter of recommendation! But it's not always the greatest idea to rotate at a place where you really want to go, unless you are a superstar and ready to blow them out of the water. Good luck!

 

[NotAProgDirector]

All good advice here. One more suggestion:

Introduce yourself to the program administrator. Once they know your story, you're more likely to get one on one time with the PD.

 

[gutonc]

If you are doing a subspecialty rotation (as many aways are), it is unlikely that you'll ever interact with the PD or that s/he will have any clue that you're there.

So sometime in the first week, wander by the office and introduced yourself to the PC and explain your situation. If you get no love with that approach, an email to the PD (or a request that your attending contact the PD on your behalf), is totally reasonable.

 

[K31]

Going on an away next month and I am sure I will be attending conferences, grand rounds, etc. Is it acceptable to introduce yourself to the program director? I'm hoping to interview while I'm there to save money on flying back and forth.

It is absolutely acceptable to introduce yourself to the program director as a visiting student who will be applying and is interested in their program. In fact, I'd say it's expected.

 

[peedr]

Could you email the PD directly?

I did this when I was on my away in a surgical subspecialty. The PD invited me to his OR for the day and gave me his secretary's email to schedule a meeting with him in his office. It wasn't a formal interview or anything, but it worked out very well in terms of getting to introduce myself.

 

[Winged Scapula]

If you are interested in doing your residency there, I agree with those that have suggested introducing yourself to the PD.

I did that on my aways and it worked well except with ol Hiram "and fire 'em" Polk.

 

[sella turcica]

Honestly, if you go far away and rotate as an MS4 and you want to apply to that program, I would make it almost mandatory to at least say hi to the PD. Otherwise when they see your application and notice that you rotated there, they'd say "well that'd odd, I don't remember student xyz, maybe he didn't like it here."

When I was an MS4 I did an away rotation at a place 2000 miles from my school. While I was there, I emailed the PD, said I was doing my rotation there and wanted to chat for a few minutes if possible. Afterward, I mentioned that I was planning to apply to the program there, and that if they wanted to interview me it would be a little easier on the wallet for me to do it while I was there. They interviewed me in October, way before their normal schedule, and I saved a lot of money.

 

[PTPoeny]

Also talk to the secretaries and ask them directly if they do formal interviews for students who did a rotation there. Where I did my away I was told they do not interview students who did aways because they figure that they know far more about us from spending a month with us than could possibly be learned in a day. There was no formal interview while we were there either, we were just told to make sure we spent a day in the OR and half a day in clinic with each attending. We did sit down with the PD for 10 minutes each but that was a chance for us to ask questions, he didn't ask us any questions.

 

[armybound]

I met with the PD on my aways. It really is as simple as "Hi, I'm X, I'm a visiting student from Y. I'll be here with you guys for the month, thanks for the opportunity to let me see what your program is like."