coming from an M2 you must have more information from me, but when visited and interviewed, both the M1 students that I talked to and my faculty interviewer mentioned that a downfall to Jefferson is that in the year M1 there is not as much inpatient/hospital contact.
Yes you are required to visit the hospital 4 times...but even once a month is too little for my personal tastes.
I felt that way, too, last year as an MSI. "4 visits doesn't seem like a lot...." But each visit for me lasted for an average of 4 hours.
Keep in mind that you have to do this while balancing lab, classes, studying, grocery shopping, sleeping, etc. Also remember that your daily class schedule is very, very different from undergrad. I tried to schedule preceptor/shadowing visits on my own time, above and beyond what I had to do for school. It's nearly impossible, because your class schedule is so filled that you don't have time for that much extra clinical experience. Trust me, you'll get your fill as a third year.
If you have the energy and the stamina to go on a 4 hour clinical visit more than once a month...then you're a freak of nature.
Actually, in all seriousness, if I heard an MS1 planning on doing a clinical visit once a month, I'd strongly discourage them. They're setting themselves up for burnout or failure. Clinical visits do eat up a LOT of time and energy. If you did a visit once a month, you'd never have a free weekend, actually. That'd be tough.
Hanging around a hospital as a first year is less fun than you think it would be. You don't know anything, you don't know what to ask the patient, the attending
KNOWS that you don't know anything so he can't ask you anything interesting, you don't know how to perform a physical exam, you don't know what to look for, etc. And it is incredibly awkward to deal with hospitalized patients as a med student. (It's different than when you volunteered in college. Patients expect actual knowledge from a person in a white coat, whereas they know that the candystriper is just...there to deliver flowers and whatnot.)
It's much easier, as an MS1, to interact with patients in an outpatient setting. Your tour guide and interviewer either didn't know this or didn't remember this. I can describe it for you in better detail from my own personal experience, if you like, but this post is getting kind of long as it is....
Not saying that there arent' good clinical experiences there: jefferson produces the best clinicians (if not the very best pretty darn close) but there is a lack of immediate involvement during M1 inless you go seek it yourself. Ie they will not hold your hand to give you clinical experience as a requirement as an m1, but it's certainly available. This struck me as strange, because most of the other school's I've visited are big on getting students in that setting as soon as possible (USC, Miami, etc)
Just so we're clear..."clinical experiences" do
NOT refer just to inpatient stuff. Outpatient stuff is a very important part of what you will do as a med student, and might be what you choose to do as a doctor. I think that outpatient stuff is a VASTLY better teaching tool than inpatient experience, to be honest. It's better to learn how to calculate a respiratory rate on a person who is alert, clothed, and fairly healthy, than on someone who is supine, intubated, and suffering from CHF/COPD. To be honest, I don't understand why a med school would throw 1st years into mostly inpatient settings, unless they're not affiliated with very good outpatient clinics.
I don't know what the attraction is at USC or Miami. Looking at their websites, I don't see how their curriculum differs much from Jefferson.
Unless...are you including clinical skills sessions during "clinical experiences."? I wouldn't think so, but I'm not sure. Clinical skills sessions, with standardized patients, occur once a month or something. These are supposed to help you, so that you don't look like a total klutz the first time you lay hands on a patient. (They don't help - I still looked like a weird pervert when I tried to find a woman's PMI, which is normally under the left breast. And I'm a girl.)
If they "held your hand" to give you clinical experience, they know that that would create more work and more stress for the students. As an MS2, we have hospital visits once a month. Between classes, extracurriculars, small group, problem solving sessions, and grand rounds, even those monthly visits are killing me. They eat up an entire afternoon. Throw in the monthly, 4.5-hour long sessions at the clinical skills center with standardized patients (to practice physical exam skills) and then add in the fact that we have an exam every 3 weeks, and it takes a lot out of you. [Oh, and by "extracurriculars" I don't mean the tennis club or whatever. I help organize youth outreach to homeless teens in North Philadelphia. I love it, but it will make you want to pull your hair out sometimes.]
Whew. That's a long post.
But you raise good points, and things that are important to a lot of pre-MS1s. Does all this make sense? I hope so....
