Is this a bad order for rotations?

[GonnaBeAnMD]

I just received my order of rotations for 3rd year (below). I was wondering if it's a good idea to keep the following order or switch it?

OB/Gyn
Peds
Elective (IM /cardiology)
shelf exams


Elective (not selected yet)
Vacation
Surgery
shelf exams

FP
FP
IM
shelf exams

Psych
IM
shelf

Also, does your school give shelf every 3 months or right after each rotation? Thanks

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[Medical123]

My school gives a shelf exam after each rotation. I would recommend doing IM before surgery. I didn't do this and found that there was a lot of Internal Medicine on the Shelf exam. In fact, a couple of friends and I were talking about third year rotations the other day. All of us had taken surgery pretty early and we all felt that having medicine before surgery would have made things a lot easier for us.

Just be aware that some schools expect a lot more out of you when you are doing rotations later in the year because they feel that you should have a much broader fund of knowledge. I did Medicine late in the year and when we had our orientation, we were flat out told that much more was expected out of us.

 

[SLUser11]

My school gives a shelf exam after each rotation. I would recommend doing IM before surgery. I didn't do this and found that there was a lot of Internal Medicine on the Shelf exam. In fact, a couple of friends and I were talking about third year rotations the other day. All of us had taken surgery pretty early and we all felt that having medicine before surgery would have made things a lot easier for us.

I can't count how many times I've heard "there's alot of medicine on the surgery shelf," both from my own classmates and on SDN. The irony is that most people who say this haven't had IM yet, or taken the IM shelf yet, so I'm curious how they feel qualified to state that the tests are similar.

I guess it's just a big pet peeve of mine, and I cringe every time I hear it.

The surgery shelf is not mostly medicine.

This is one of the great fallacies of third year.

I feel like students are expecting there to be nothing but technical/procedural and anatomy questions on a surgery exam, which is ridiculous. Then when the shelf asks them questions that pertains to patient management outside the OR, they immediately think it's non-surgical.

The Surgery shelf is mostly surgical, but it pertains to pre-op, peri-op, and post-op care of the patient, as well as medical conditions you'd encounter/diagnose/treat in a surgical patient.

Of course, if you disagree with me, Use blueprints/Pretest/etc for IM to study for the surgery shelf and see how you do......

 

[Tired]

I guess it's just a big pet peeve of mine, and I cringe every time I hear it.

The surgery shelf is not mostly medicine.

This is one of the great fallacies of third year.

<sigh> Let me guess, you're a Surgery resident, right?

Let me offer my thoughts: Yes, the "medicine" that MS3s talk about on the Surgery shelf is primarily periop management and physical exam findings on surgical patients. Are these "medicine" topics? Of course not, they are surgical topics. But do they fall within the realm of what most students would consider "medicine"? Absolutely.

SLUser11's objections are primarily semantic; it is common among his ilk to to feel annoyed that General Surgery does not get credit for the large amount of non-operative medicine that they practice. As a soon-to-be Ortho intern, I agree with him whole-heartedly. Gen Surg does a lot of non-op work that other surgical subspecialties have abandoned completely ("He has diabetes?! Get a Medicine consult!")

A solid grasp on IM will benefit you on the Surgery shelf. It will also benefit you on the Peds, Ob/Gyn, and FP exams as well, which is why so many people advocate taking IM first. However, it is not by any means necessary. Every rotation your third year (with the possible exception of Psych) will in some way "prepare" you for the following rotations' exams. No schedule will "doom" you, and no schedule will let you "cruise".

 

[LurkNoMore]

First off, do you know/think you know what you want to go in to, if so, this may modify how good a schedule it is....
Interestingly your schedule is similar to what mine was/is: OBGYN/Selective/PEDS/SURG/holidays/IM/FP (now)/Selective/Psych

OBGYN will give you a little bit of medicine and let you see some OR (I went in not wanting to do it, and it stayed that way), peds will introduce you somewhat to medicine, you also will have vacation before surgery, so if you want to really prepare I guess you could before surgery while on vacation but that is prob crazy talk. At least you will be going into surgery with your batteries re-charged. I had medicine after surgery, and I rocked the medicine shelf (we have shelfs after each 6 wk rotation), but I am yet to hear my surgery grades (yes, this is odd, but oh well). It looks as if you will finish up strong with medicine-related fields and this could possibly benefit you for Step II if you need to take it early (I am only theorizing, I have no idea if this is correct)... of course, all of this depends on your goals for your rotations and what you think you will be in to...

 

[Sean2tall]

My schedule was thus:

Surgery x2
FP
OBGYN

Winter Break

IM - Inpatient
IM - Outpatient
Peds
Psych

I think it was an awesome choice. I feel like it is smooth sailing from here on out. At the very least I would try to keep Surg and OB out of the last couple months.

I see no reason to worry about any rotation in relation to any other. You've probably heard it a million times, but it's absolutely true - You will be judged differently for the first block vs the last. As you can see I did just the opposite of med before surg, and as a matter of fact, when it came to GI bleeds, abdominal pain, etc., surgery very well prepared me for medicine rotation. It completely does not matter.

That said, I am extremely happy with the choice to bang out the hardest rotations first.

 

[QuinnB]

the way it works at our school is that the surg shelf stuff is the medicine that most of the interns know and practice (surg or IM) but that you never learned on medicine (fluids, etc...) and only got on surg. We don't really say that its IM material per se...just patient management in general no matter what inpatient floor you're on.