List of the best/most interesting 4th year electives

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nickadams18

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What are some of the coolest or most interesting 4th year electives you have seen? Including both domestic and international.
I am referring to unique rotations that your institution has or that you have heard of at other institutions. Examples being a wilderness medicine elective, international tropical medicine, or intro to microvascular surgery lab. Electives that you dont see everyday.
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There are no "best" or "most interesting" electives. You want the ones that round out your medical education the best. Really,the stuf you avoid and find boring is probably the best stuff to do and would be the most beneficial.

That being said, I've heard repeatedly that everyone should do a month in the ICU, whether peds or adults. I also think Nephrology is a good one to at least do 2 weeks with and pick up a few things.
 
Yeah, def do ICU--PICU if you're doing peds, MICU if anything else. Gas is a great rotation where you get some procedural experience. If you're interested in EM or CCM, there're some bedside ultrasound rotations around the country that are very useful.
 
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do some schools not require time in the ICU? We have to do a month, it can be PICU/NICU/MICU/SICU. Seemed like a no brainer requirement to me.

I did a palliative care elective as a 3rd year but its typically a 4th year elective. I think regardless of what you are going in to, its a really cool elective. Pretty much everyone is going to be dealing with patients in chronic pain and end of life decision/care and i feel like medical education (at least at my school) pretty much drops the ball on both of those topics (a few lectures scattered throughout the first two years isn't going to cut it).
 
We don't have a requirement for it. We have 8 weeks of internal medicine during 3rd year where 2-3 weeks is designated inpatient and then the rest is outpatient, unless your attending sees patients in the hospital. Because of scheduling conflicts, I was able to do a 2 week subspecialty rotation as well.

MS4 has a mandatory month of "advanced internal medicine" that is all inpatient with us.

The only real core rotations required by the LCME are IM, Surgery, Ob/Gyn, Peds, and Psych. (I think) Many places require Family med +/- neurology during third year. MS4 is all over the place with school. The major requirement is the school being able to show they are providing a well rounded education. We have mandatory month rotations on "advanced" family medicine and Internal medicine (don't ask me what makes FM more advanced than before), geriatrics and emergency medicine.

We are allowed 3 externships, but only two in the same specialty area. Our schedule also has to get approved by admin. They don't want us specializing before residency...unless you are going into internal med or family med, in which case you can take all the medicine subspecialties you like. That isn't technically how it is supposed to happen, but they tend to do that versus surgery people who may want to do orthopedics, surgical onc, and vascular surgery but couldn't.

Short story made long, no critical care is not required at all schools. :p
 
I am referring to unique rotations that your instituting has or that you have heard of at other institutions. Examples being a wilderness medicine elective, international tropical medicine, or intro to microvascular surgery lab.
 
Outpatient FM :p

Seriously: cards, trauma surg - the sicker, the better
 
I did rotations I knew little to nothing about. Opthomology, radiology, cosmetic derm... things like that. I had a good time and learned a lot. And the hours ended up being pretty darn nice.
 
Bone marrow transplant was pretty cool.
 
Oh come on. I'm pretty sure the OP is asking about things like the Big Sky Medical Clinic rotation. Do medicine half a day, ski half a day at the biggest skiing in america. The waiting list for this rotation is about 5 years long, lol.

Some med students rotate through all of the resort sites, going to vail, park city, heavenly, etc. 4th year can be a year-long party with a $40,000 cover charge if you chose to plan it that way.
 
MT Headed said:
Oh come on. I'm pretty sure the OP is asking about things like the Big Sky Medical Clinic rotation. Do medicine half a day, ski half a day at the biggest skiing in america. The waiting list for this rotation is about 5 years long, lol.

Some med students rotate through all of the resort sites, going to vail, park city, heavenly, etc. 4th year can be a year-long party with a $40,000 cover charge if you chose to plan it that way.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what im looking for. Keep em coming
 
I did six weeks with NASA/UTMB doing space medicine, and did two months in South Africa doing Trauma Surgery in Soweto (outside Johannesburg). Some of the best months of my life, from both personal and educational perspectives.
 
I have to admit that the NASA one sounds especially cool. The Africa one is too, but I'm an ex-wannabe astronaut.
 
Just found an elective called Film and Mental Illness at univ of colorodo.
 
nickadams18 said:
What are some of the coolest or most interesting 4th year electives you have seen? Including both domestic and international.
I am referring to unique rotations that your institution has or that you have heard of at other institutions. Examples being a wilderness medicine elective, international tropical medicine, or intro to microvascular surgery lab. Electives that you dont see everyday.
Click to expand...

There are a whole bunch of places that offer wilderness medicine electives:
http://wms.org/students/electives.aspx

Burns has a cool one on Native Hawaiian Health:
http://jabsom.hawaii.edu/JABSOM/admissions/nhh.php?
 
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