Longitudinal vs Traditional Clerkships

[greenpenguin65]

I know there have been quite a few threads on these topics, but I haven't been able to find too much out there on the main pros/cons of longitudinal versus traditional clerkships. Essentially, my school is launching a new longitudinal clerkship at a county hospital (a pretty esteemed hospital in the state overall), where each morning is set up to be on a different service and there are a few afternoons a week to "track the patients you're assigned at the beginning of the clerkship" or do additional clerkship exploration on other services.

Basically, I know that the traditional route is tried and true, so I'm unsure about how longitudinal clerkships prepare someone for shelf exams, really let someone dive deep into a specialty over the year. The option to do the traditional route is somewhat complicated by the fact that there are half of the clerkship tracks that have step 1 before and half that have them after the first rotation. I'm not totally sure on what I want to do, like OB/GYN or peds or who knows what, but I essentially don't want to box myself into a corner with whatever I choose.

Does anyone have experience with longitudinal programs? Otherwise, any advice on choosing a track/if taking step after a rotation is the worst possible idea?

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[Psai]

It's a gimmick. I longitudinally follow my patients all the time. It takes a few minutes of chart review or a reading of the discharge summary.

 

[theseeker4]

I know there have been quite a few threads on these topics, but I haven't been able to find too much out there on the main pros/cons of longitudinal versus traditional clerkships. Essentially, my school is launching a new longitudinal clerkship at a county hospital (a pretty esteemed hospital in the state overall), where each morning is set up to be on a different service and there are a few afternoons a week to "track the patients you're assigned at the beginning of the clerkship" or do additional clerkship exploration on other services.

Basically, I know that the traditional route is tried and true, so I'm unsure about how longitudinal clerkships prepare someone for shelf exams, really let someone dive deep into a specialty over the year. The option to do the traditional route is somewhat complicated by the fact that there are half of the clerkship tracks that have step 1 before and half that have them after the first rotation. I'm not totally sure on what I want to do, like OB/GYN or peds or who knows what, but I essentially don't want to box myself into a corner with whatever I choose.

Does anyone have experience with longitudinal programs? Otherwise, any advice on choosing a track/if taking step after a rotation is the worst possible idea?

You are definitely not boxing yourself into a particular specialty based on your third year track. The schedule order matters very little. As long as you can get in the rotations you need beginning of fourth year, you will be able to match to whatever you want to and have stats to get into. Don't worry about that, take the most convenient track available.