lottery for 3rd year clinical rotations

[Goldenhair]

How are you assigned to clinical rotation sites for the 3rd year at your school? Do most schools have a lottery system? How is it run at your school? Our school in the past randomized the list of students and then each student in the list order chose on the spot the clinical site - so that the first student had the most advantage and the last did not have any choice. Is there a simple way to make it more fair?

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[Non-TradTulsa]

How are you assigned to clinical rotation sites for the 3rd year at your school? Do most schools have a lottery system? How is it run at your school? Our school in the past randomized the list of students and then each student in the list order chose on the spot the clinical site - so that the first student had the most advantage and the last did not have any choice. Is there a simple way to make it more fair?

There's no fairer way than a lottery that anyone has been able to make work that I know of. I admit that the last student does get the short end of the stick, but at my school there were more rotation "shells" than there were students - so even the last one had some choice. Although our shells were simply to pick rotation order - we all went to the same clinical sites. There was some talk at my school of giving first crack to the best-performing (highest GPA) students but that was quickly rejected. At least, in our system, selection of elective rotations went in reverse order - if you were last for picking your "shell," you were first for picking available spots for electives.

What I learned was that what they told us at the time was true - the order of rotations doesn't matter nearly as much as budding MS-III's think it does.

 

[Pinkertinkle]

We do it by rank list.

 

[Goldenhair]

We do it by rank list.

This is what I was looking for. How exactly do you manage doing the rank list - could you give more details?

 

[njbmd]

How are you assigned to clinical rotation sites for the 3rd year at your school? Do most schools have a lottery system? How is it run at your school? Our school in the past randomized the list of students and then each student in the list order chose on the spot the clinical site - so that the first student had the most advantage and the last did not have any choice. Is there a simple way to make it more fair?

Our school simply assigns them randomly. We had absolutely no choice in the matter and didn't need or want any. If I had picked my rotations, I would have picked the exact same schedule that I received by random. It makes no difference in which order you do rotations anyway. Everyone has to do every rotation. Still, I didn't want to do peds in the summer (school physicals) and wanted IM last so that I didn't have to spend much time studying for Step II. I loved every clinical site that my school picked out and life during third year was great for me. I was able to collect my honors without any difficulty. I even honored my first rotation too even though I felt pretty green when I hit the wards.

In fact, didn't hear any complaints from any of my class during third year about clinical sites or order of rotations. We were pretty mellow and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves anyway.

If you have a clinical site that is subpar, let someone know, otherwise, order of rotations is meaningless.

 

[akpete]

We have 16 different preset tracks of 3rd year rotations. You rank your choices, then it's a lottery.

I was lucky and got my first choice. Most people get in the top three. A few unlucky people get their 10th choice or so.

4th year is a more complicated lottery in which you rank rotation and month combos.

 

[hmm...]

I heard rumors from 2nd years last year that we do a ranked lottery.

basically, you pick your top three in order for each rotation. Then the magic computer takes everyone's picks and hands you your assignments. You can then trade with other students afterwards.

 

[zephyrhills123]

How are you assigned to clinical rotation sites for the 3rd year at your school? Do most schools have a lottery system? How is it run at your school? Our school in the past randomized the list of students and then each student in the list order chose on the spot the clinical site - so that the first student had the most advantage and the last did not have any choice. Is there a simple way to make it more fair?

My school has a lottery system similar to what yours is (a student pulls a number out of a bag, then the student who picked #1 chooses their site, etc). My friend's boyfriend says that he could make a program where each person puts their top three choices and the program tries to give each person their top choice... unfortunately there are about four sites (out of seven) that are extremely popular so it would be pretty much impossible for each person to get their #1 choice... maybe their top 3.

 

[Blesbok]

I think it should be done by rank list. The question is, how do you do this without exposing the rank of others in the class?