M3 rotations question

[Sardonix]

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Lmao. Again, no one, said residents must be present for a good learning experience.... did you even read what you quoted?

'kay, so we're being nitpicky.

My point was that 3rd year without residents is not always bad. Paraphrasing here, you attempted to correct me with, "No one is saying 3rd year rotations without residents are bad. They're saying they're just not as good as rotations with residents." Sure, technically true. But let us review some quotes to see why the spirit of the thread doesn't exactly agree with that sentiment:

I'm at a site w/o residents. It is honestly demoralizing the level of apathy I see and deal with on most of my rotations. Some docs are well-intentioned, but others do not care. And I don't blame them most of the time. I chose to pick a site that was in my hometown so that I could live at home and decrease costs especially since my parents are going through some financial hardships. In hindsight, it was a mistake I think. A few of my friends at other sites, especially those w/ residents, seem to enjoy not only stronger clerkships, but better teaching. None of my NBME shelf scores have been above average and that is likely related to my sh**ty rotations.

...

Don't fall into the same trap that I convinced myself. Go to a site w/ residents. I had told myself the same, but at the last minute, decided to come home for better weather, comfort, and familiarity. I would say it has largely been a misfire, but I try to remain optimistic in that I have more free time for wellness and that most of M3 for most people in the DO world is not great relative to MDs and even for MDs, it's not all sunshine and roses (especially for Carib folks). Glorified shadowing is part of the game, just much more prevalent for DOs (not only in my experience, but based off SDN, reddit, and speaking w/ classmates). I should have gone w/ my gut because I had a decent shot at ranking and matching at a program w/ a few residencies, but also a well-established system that had been taking students. I'm grateful, though, I have a good Step 1 score (243), that will hopefully negate the bumps I expect to endure during M4 auditions if I choose to do something outside of EM or anesthesiology. But, in short, I think this will hurt me.

/rant

edit: But to again reiterate and help answer your question: go to a place w/ residents. I would rather not do much during third year, but learn, than do scut work and not learn. I felt I did a lot of scut work on my Surg rotation, didn't really learn about processes or pathology. That's my 2 cents. Ideally, you go somewhere where you do stuff and also learn, but -- and I say this only based off my friend who attends a respectable MD school w/ a great hospital w/ a ton of residents -- that even MD students do their fair share of shadowing, but they have better didactics (eg. weekly conference etc.).

Speaking as a 4th year coming from a school where clinical rotations were supposed to be a "strength," I can tell you that DO rotations are very poor. I did a sub-i at a large ACGME university medical center and picked the brains of the MS3s about their rotations. It isn't even close to the same quality. My school has it's own hospital with it's own residencies and has hundreds of preceptors in the community that take medical students and our rotations can't hold a candle to the experience they got at the MD school.

To the OP, if you don’t go somewhere with residents at least in IM and/or your preferred field, your getting screwed out of your tuition. For instance, on IM we’d have weekly board review. We’d have daily afternoon lectures where they’d discuss topics way beyond what a third year should know which gives you a peek into what training in that field really means. Once per week they even asked the students what they’d like to talk about. I said once that I was having trouble with some of the questions in uworld that required me to know a little about vent settings. They got one of the pulmonologists to give a presentation and he broke it down for me. It might’ve been the first time my tuition dollars went toward my education lol. On my preceptor rotations, there’s been some pimping and some light teaching here and there but there’s no comparison.

Residents vs preceptors is literally a learning vs doing decision. There’s plenty good to be said about doing, but you’re there to learn.

Literally anything I say.

Nevermind, you're right. No one here is saying you can't get good learning experience without residents present. I absolutely retract my implication that you're being pedantic here.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

'kay, so we're being nitpicky.

My point was that 3rd year without residents is not always bad. Paraphrasing here, you attempted to correct me with, "No one is saying that. They're just not as good as rotations with residents." Let's review some quotes to see why the spirit of the thread doesn't exactly agree with that sentiment:









Nevermind, you're right. No one here is saying you can't get good learning experience without residents present. I absolutely retract my implication that you're being pedantic here.

So your response is to highlight more examples of how you’re wrong?

 

[hallowmann]

Its crazy how often threads like these get started. I'm pretty sure there's at least one every year or two.

I can easily say that I felt I got a great experience in my 3rd year rotations at a DO school. The majority (not all, there were certainly a couple of flops) were on par with rotations that neighboring MD students were in. My clinical site also had regular didactics, board review sessions, and a PE workshop that you could attend as much as you want (although they recommended attending twice before the real thing). Almost all of my rotations were with residents/resident teams. All of those programs are also now ACGME accredited, and despite my skepticism then, I actually understand why.

Why am I even talking about this? Its because we have people on this site that make it seem like the idea of good rotation experiences at a DO school is delusional. It isn't. The real issue is lack of consistency. In my school we had people at sites like mine, and then we had people in the middle of nowhere that didn't do a single inpatient rotation in 3rd year. No matter how much MD students complain about their sites (and trust me a lot of our complaints overlapped, "all I do is shadow", "no one is teaching", "I always feel like I'm just in the way"), there's no way they finished 3rd year without that experience under their belt. This makes getting the right site all the more important.

I will also say, that if you are unlucky enough to get the wrong site, its not the end of the world. Instead of slacking during those 8-5 Mon-Fri OB/Surgery rotations, you should be studying double. You should ace those shelfs. You should push yourself that much harder. You should also plan to do 1-2 electives at big centers with residents. Doing that will allow you to figure out what you're missing and if you work hard enough it will make up for much of the gaps come audition time.

 

[Sardonix]

So your response is to highlight more examples of how you’re wrong?

Nah my man, my argument this entire time has been if you're going into FM/IM/Peds/Psych/EM it really doesn't matter if you have residents but I fully understand why someone going into a competitive specialty would need that kind of an academic setting. In essence, adding some nuance to discussion of "no residents bad" "have residents good."

More recently though my response aimed to highlight you being a persnickety fussbudget 🙂

 

[dpmd]

Speaking as someone who spent a year training surgery residents and a combo of carib MD and DO students and currently have DO students rotating with me in private practice, I can tell you that my current students are not getting anywhere close to as good of an education as the ones at the residency site (which was nowhere near as good as I got in my MD school). Problem is I get paid nothing for teaching and the operating room staff (especially anesthesia) expects cases to go quickly. So I may teach a student to close a 5mm port site with one suture if I only have one case to do but when I have 6 cases at 3 different hospitals they may get to do nothing. They also don't have access to the emr for reasons unknown to me which means they are unable to do notes or see a patient and present them to me in any meaningful way so I don't have them do either. They might occasionally shadow me as i see a patient in the hospital or in clinic but more often they go observe a different surgeon. I do talk to them about disease processes and anatomy, but the pre med I had shadow me also got that. They all seem happy enough about the rotation (I have never been sent any feedback on me from the school) but if they knew what they were missing I don't know that they would be.

 

[Espressso]

Speaking as a 4th year coming from a school where clinical rotations were supposed to be a "strength," I can tell you that DO rotations are very poor. I did a sub-i at a large ACGME university medical center and picked the brains of the MS3s about their rotations. It isn't even close to the same quality. My school has it's own hospital with it's own residencies and has hundreds of preceptors in the community that take medical students and our rotations can't hold a candle to the experience they got at the MD school.

Anecdotally, when I was a 3rd year on my surgery rotation we had one auditioner who had done his 3rd year rotation with a preceptor. He was clueless how to present patients or work as part of the resident team. He could suture as well as an intern but nobody GAF about that when he bumbled and fumbled through his patient presentations as bad or worse than the third years. He failed to match but that is beside the point, his 3rd year rotations poorly prepared him for his 4th year rotations and if he had matched in surgery he would have been a crap intern.

To add to this first part. I think the other big reason why rotating at sites with residents in place is better is that the attendings are much more likely to be good teachers. It's incredible when you rotate at a big teaching hospital, how every attending on every floor actually either enjoys teaching or at least doesn't make it obvious that they don't. Compared to rotating at podunk clinics in the middle of no where, a lot of those preceptors just don't really care to teach. Yeah, they'll answer your questions here and there. But for the most part the school begged them to take you and they obliged. The faculty at a teaching hospital truly want to teach you and they want you to learn.

 

[Espressso]

I think the benefit of the residents is to really learn how the medical team functions, as others have mentioned. But the more important benefit doesn't have to do with residents at all... it's the attendings that year in and year out, teach residents. They make better teachers.

 

[Espressso]

Speaking as someone who spent a year training surgery residents and a combo of carib MD and DO students and currently have DO students rotating with me in private practice, I can tell you that my current students are not getting anywhere close to as good of an education as the ones at the residency site (which was nowhere near as good as I got in my MD school). Problem is I get paid nothing for teaching and the operating room staff (especially anesthesia) expects cases to go quickly. So I may teach a student to close a 5mm port site with one suture if I only have one case to do but when I have 6 cases at 3 different hospitals they may get to do nothing. They also don't have access to the emr for reasons unknown to me which means they are unable to do notes or see a patient and present them to me in any meaningful way so I don't have them do either. They might occasionally shadow me as i see a patient in the hospital or in clinic but more often they go observe a different surgeon. I do talk to them about disease processes and anatomy, but the pre med I had shadow me also got that. They all seem happy enough about the rotation (I have never been sent any feedback on me from the school) but if they knew what they were missing I don't know that they would be.

That's another thing.. the emr access. Most of my rotations I don't get access from my school. It's either the doc just logs in for me or I'm **** out of luck. I just started a 4 week elective at a big teaching hospital and on my first day for orientation they gave me the info for Epic and told me I have an account set up, read only but at least I can use the computers throughout the four weeks. It makes the rotation SO much better. I don't feel completely useless now!

 

[sab3156]

Nah my man, my argument this entire time has been if you're going into FM/IM/Peds/Psych/EM it really doesn't matter if you have residents but I fully understand why someone going into a competitive specialty would need that kind of an academic setting.

Clinical education is supposed to prepare you to be an intern in any specialty, not just competitive ones. Whether it is Peds/FM or Ophtho/Neurosurgery/Derm, if you have had a terrible clinical education, you're not set up to perform well in intern year.

Your argument is totally bogus and I am surprised anyone can think like that.

 

[hallowmann]

That's another thing.. the emr access. Most of my rotations I don't get access from my school. It's either the doc just logs in for me or I'm **** out of luck. I just started a 4 week elective at a big teaching hospital and on my first day for orientation they gave me the info for Epic and told me I have an account set up, read only but at least I can use the computers throughout the four weeks. It makes the rotation SO much better. I don't feel completely useless now!

Honestly, that's ridiculous. You should have EMR access. That's a huge flaw in the system. The only place I wasn't given EMR access was a place where 90% of the documentation was on paper charts. To be honest even only getting "read only" access is sort of ridiculous, but less so. What kind of places are people rotating at? Most of my classmates, even the ones at bad sites had access to the EMR (or again the charts were all on paper). Hell, we had access to the EMR at the Free Medical Clinic that I worked in as a student.

Clinical education is supposed to prepare you to be an intern in any specialty, not just competitive ones. Whether it is Peds/FM or Ophtho/Neurosurgery/Derm, if you have had a terrible clinical education, you're not set up to perform well in intern year.

While I technically agree with your overall point, there is so much of a steep learning curve intern year and so much atrophy after the match that no one is "set up to perform well in intern year". Take my intern year for example, there were clear holes in my education, which everyone has, but I also was familiar with EPIC because I used it often during electives, so when compared to the MD students who hadn't used EPIC, I didn't appear behind at all.

As much as we like to think it is, medical school education in the clinical setting is not standardized, both at DO and MD schools. Everyone comes from a different place. The skill is in how to quickly adapt, recognize your weaknesses, fix them, and come up to par with everyone around you. Being on resident teams or having a variety of elective experiences help you develop that type of skill. That said, every rotation doesn't have to be that way, just some of them.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Nah my man, my argument this entire time has been if you're going into FM/IM/Peds/Psych/EM it really doesn't matter if you have residents but I fully understand why someone going into a competitive specialty would need that kind of an academic setting. In essence, adding some nuance to discussion of "no residents bad" "have residents good."

If telling yourself that makes you feel better about it, then sure....

More recently though my response aimed to highlight you being a persnickety fussbudget 🙂

So no intention of having any honesty of debate, instead you hope to employ logical fallacy to evade having to actually address the fact that you are wrong. Noted.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

Most of the posts in this thread have some level of accuracy. Generally speaking, training in a center without residents will provide more hands on opportunities than on a big teaching service with residents. If you are a 3rd year at the end of the line, Attending, fellow, resident,(maybe 2), Sub I, auditioner, 3rd yr from other schools, you aren't going to get a lot of hands on experience. Now, bedside lectures from attendings, fellows and resident are very helpful. Noon conferences and journal clubs present the most current information and teach you how to critically deconstruct a journal article. Residents and attendings will critique your notes and patient presentations. If given the opportunity, I would highly recommend spending time on an academic teaching service. Certainly, life is not over if you dont. Ideally a mix of preceptorships and formal teaching service would be best. Sadly, it's not set up that way. And to be fair, not all teaching services are wonderful, some residents and attendings dont teach much. Teaching services do present more opportunities.

 

[Sardonix]

So no intention of having any honesty of debate, instead you hope to employ logical fallacy to evade having to actually address the fact that you are wrong. Noted.

If someone responds to my honest statement with "No one is saying that you're wrong" without further justification I respond accordingly. The fact of the matter is, you disagree with me while I partially agree with you. I agree that 3rd rotations should have residents in an academic setting, however I don't feel like it's the end of the world if they do not. While you and Sab Story seem firmly entrenched in your beliefs that the DO world is constantly failing left and right, I much rather side with the various moderate posters here who agree there are major flaws but feel DO students and residents are and will be successful regardless. I feel like that view is a lot more sane/less prone to mental breakdown. If you think that makes me an idiot, oh well, I respect you either way.

Clinical education is supposed to prepare you to be an intern in any specialty, not just competitive ones. Whether it is Peds/FM or Ophtho/Neurosurgery/Derm, if you have had a terrible clinical education, you're not set up to perform well in intern year.
Your argument is totally bogus and I am surprised anyone can think like that.

Hey buddy, though I've repeatedly said I'm not advocating for terrible clinical education--I disagree that 3rd year rotations without residents makes them automatically terrible. Beyond that, I just wanna say I admire your ability remain 100% cynical/pessimistic at all times. Hang in there, pal.

 

[Deecee2DO]

So your response is to highlight more examples of how you’re wrong?

Dude sardonix is an M1 lol his opinion here is moot

 

[Sardonix]

Dude sardonix is an M1 lol his opinion here is moot

*M4 applying academic FM.

But close!

 

[Deecee2DO]

*M4 applying academic FM.

But close!

Oh word?

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

If someone responds to my honest statement with "No one is saying that you're wrong" without further justification I respond accordingly.

There is no justification needed. You intentionally misrepresented the argument in order to brush it away without addressing any of it. When were called on this instead of just owning up to it you build more strawmen in order to avoid having to admit that you were flat out wrong. Kinda like this:

I much rather side with the various moderate posters here who agree there are major flaws but feel DO students and residents are and will be successful regardless.

That implies that someone said that DO students and residents can't be successful? Where did anyone say that all DO students and residents can't overcome poor rotations and be successful?

I have zero interest in further discussing this with someone who refuses to engage in honest discussion. Must be dizzying with all the gymnastics to avoid admitting to falsely generalizing an argument.

 

[Chibucks15]

In short, try to get at least some resident run rotations. This doesn't mean every one has to be like that, and you most likely will be okay (depending on specialty choice) either way. Try to get as many resident rotations as possible and work your ass off regardless. It isn't like arguing on here is gonna change anyone's situation anyway. Play the cards your dealt, no matter how crappy they are make the best of em. Its a tax of DO life. I think this has just about run its course /thread

 

[Deecee2DO]

In short, try to get at least some resident run rotations. This doesn't mean every one has to be like that, and you most likely will be okay (depending on specialty choice) either way. Try to get as many resident rotations as possible and work your ass off regardless. It isn't like arguing on here is gonna change anyone's situation anyway. Play the cards your dealt, no matter how crappy they are make the best of em. Its a tax of DO life. I think this has just about run its course /thread

I agree. The general advice on this thread is residents> no residents so I will take this advice. To the M3/4s, residents and physicians thank you all for your comments/insight

 

[libertyyne]

I will say that my buddy at a PA site is getting so much surgery exposure it's nuts. The hospital does have a residency program, so it has a MD feel to it. But, point being some DO sites are at least adequate.

And after reading my post yesterday I think I was feeling sorry for msyelf. Today has been great on the L&D floor. Yeah I spent about 1 hr with a nurse, but I scrubbed in for a few cases, saw an epidural, and at least feel involved. The difference was today I took ownership of my education. I’ve been passive — if a doc doesn’t come up to me and talk then I just continue sitting and do Anki on my phone. Today I walked up to the doc and said can I scrub in? He said sure and began teaching me in the OR. Yesterday was a bit different since I had an anesthesiologist, and after expressing my interest in the specialty, blow me off. It was upsetting. Again, the ups and downs of DO clerkships which likely doesn’t go on in the MD world at least not as much...

At my rotation sites you never had to ask to scrub in for a case if you are on service, Every one of my rotations it was an expectation that one of the two medical student would scrub in, even at the week i spent at l&D at a community hospital.
With sites with residents we always had expectations placed on us in terms of being involved in care, writing notes, seeing consults, vaginal births, and small procedures. Those amongst us that wanted to do more expressed it and were sometimes given opportunites to do so, like i got to close fascia and incisions during some c-sections.

 

[Doctor_Strange]

At my rotation sites you never had to ask to scrub in for a case if you are on service, Every one of my rotations it was an expectation that one of the two medical student would scrub in, even at the week i spent at l&D at a community hospital.
With sites with residents we always had expectations placed on us in terms of being involved in care, writing notes, seeing consults, vaginal births, and small procedures. Those amongst us that wanted to do more expressed it and were sometimes given opportunites to do so, like i got to close fascia and incisions during some c-sections.

Yeah, not at my site. Like I said, it's a mostly terrible rotation set up, specifically for the surgery ones. My FM and IM rotations are solid, one acts as an intern basically. On the positive, since I know I don't want to do OB, it has been great in other ways. I can shadow and learn, and if I want to do something and I ask I almost always get to do it. Otherwise, I can leave at like 2-3pm and go study. If I was surgery motivated, I could easily come in to OB at 630am and prep and get ready for the C-section at 730am. I am not forced to do so, and I don't want to since I am likely going to pursue another specialty anyways. My buddy who wants to do surgery, at the same site I am at, chose to come in on his off-days for further OR exposure.

Edit: I shouldn't say terrible rotation set up. It's not good, but saying it is terrible is too extreme. There is learning and teaching to be had. Could certainly be improved!

 

[libertyyne]

Yeah, not at my site. Like I said, it's a mostly terrible rotation set up, specifically for the surgery ones. My FM and IM rotations are solid, one acts as an intern basically. On the positive, since I know I don't want to do OB, it has been great in other ways. I can shadow and learn, and if I want to do something and I ask I almost always get to do it. Otherwise, I can leave at like 2-3pm and go study. If I was surgery motivated, I could easily come in to OB at 630am and prep and get ready for the C-section at 730am. I am not forced to do so, and I don't want to since I am likely going to pursue another specialty anyways. My buddy who wants to do surgery, at the same site I am at, chose to come in on his off-days for further OR exposure.

Thats the point tho, at my rotations you just cant get out of doing stuff if you arent interested. that sounds insane to me, you arent there to shadow you are there to rotate. I wonder if this is a common theme at DO vs MD rotations or if its just a community vs academic medical center thing, but even my community rotation docs have expectations of us.
we have also had 4-8 hours of didactics / week plus grand rounds and resident training stuff which is roughly 4 hours per week.

 

[Doctor_Strange]

Thats the point tho, at my rotations you just cant get out of doing stuff if you arent interested. I wonder if this is a common theme at DO vs MD rotations or if its just a community vs academic medical center thing, but even my community rotation docs have expectations of us.
we have also had 4-8 hours of didactics / week plus grand rounds and resident training stuff which is roughly 4 hours per week.

It's definitely a community site thing that is heightened in the DO world. At first, I was very upset at this learning environment and I had talked to my regional director about this at length. He was of the opinion that the student dictates what he or she gets out of their rotation. It also has no residents so I don't get any didactics specific to the rotation which admittedly sucks, but I would still maintain that it works out to the students' benefit if he or she knows what their goals are specialty-wise. In my case, since I plan to pursue EM I don't particular care about being first assist in the OR. Again, it's not an ideal scenario at all. Wish I was at a hospital w/ residents and more structured bedside learning.

 

[Giovanotto]

Nah my man, my argument this entire time has been if you're going into FM/IM/Peds/Psych/EM it really doesn't matter if you have residents but I fully understand why someone going into a competitive specialty would need that kind of an academic setting. In essence, adding some nuance to discussion of "no residents bad" "have residents good."

More recently though my response aimed to highlight you being a persnickety fussbudget 🙂

Bad advice and completely disagree. For any specialty, seek a site with residents for some of your rotations. It will only help you during 4th year and beyond.

 

[libertyyne]

It's definitely a community site thing that is heightened in the DO world. At first, I was very upset at this learning environment and I had talked to my regional director about this at length. He was of the opinion that the student dictates what he or she gets out of their rotation. It also has no residents so I don't get any didactics specific to the rotation which admittedly sucks, but I would still maintain that it works out to the students' benefit if he or she knows what their goals are specialty-wise. In my case, since I plan to pursue EM I don't particular care about being first assist in the OR. Again, it's not an ideal scenario at all. Wish I was at a hospital w/ residents and more structured bedside learning.

thats insane to me, even in em you might have to deal with obstetric emergencies our EM residents rotate through L&D for a month. Sorry to hear that, saying that the student dictates what they should get out of rotation is a cop out. There should be a standard level of experience a student should get out of it, and then if they want advanced exposure thats what they can get in addition.

 

[Doctor_Strange]

thats insane to me, even in em you might have to deal with obstetric emergencies our EM residents rotate through L&D for a month. Sorry to hear that, saying that the student dictates what they should get out of rotation is a cop out. There should be a standard level of experience a student should get out of it, and then if they want advanced exposure thats what they can get in addition.

Yeah, it's not ideal. There's a lot of pushing by the students on any given day, at least when it comes to OB, to get the most out if it. My other rotations aren't nearly as bad.

 

[sunshinefl]

It's definitely a community site thing that is heightened in the DO world. At first, I was very upset at this learning environment and I had talked to my regional director about this at length. He was of the opinion that the student dictates what he or she gets out of their rotation. It also has no residents so I don't get any didactics specific to the rotation which admittedly sucks, but I would still maintain that it works out to the students' benefit if he or she knows what their goals are specialty-wise. In my case, since I plan to pursue EM I don't particular care about being first assist in the OR. Again, it's not an ideal scenario at all. Wish I was at a hospital w/ residents and more structured bedside learning.

My core site is a teaching hospital with multiple residencies, however the hospital doesn’t have OB at all. So for OB it’s preceptor based, and the deliveries are at a nearby hospital and Gyn surgeries are at my home hospital. ObGyn was actually a more intense month than either of my surgery rotations. I was on call 24/7 and scrubbed into every C-section or surgery, and every labor and delivery, as well as a full office schedule with a spectrum of experiences.

TLDR; I find your situation peculiar and I’m a DO student who had a preceptor-based ObGyn rotation.

 

[Giovanotto]

My core site is a teaching hospital with multiple residencies, however the hospital doesn’t have OB at all. So for OB it’s preceptor based, and the deliveries are at a nearby hospital and Gyn surgeries are at my home hospital. ObGyn was actually a more intense month than either of my surgery rotations. I was on call 24/7 and scrubbed into every C-section or surgery, and every labor and delivery, as well as a full office schedule with a spectrum of experiences.

TLDR; I find your situation peculiar and I’m a DO student who had a preceptor-based ObGyn rotation.

FWIW, I had Obgyn at a community hospital with a obgyn program and it could of been a great experience, except for the PAs who got completely in the way of everything. Only helped with 2 deliveries during my L&D week (6 days). In clinic I had to present to PAs. Obviously I reamed the site on my review.

 

[hallowmann]

Thats the point tho, at my rotations you just cant get out of doing stuff if you arent interested. that sounds insane to me, you arent there to shadow you are there to rotate. I wonder if this is a common theme at DO vs MD rotations or if its just a community vs academic medical center thing, but even my community rotation docs have expectations of us.
we have also had 4-8 hours of didactics / week plus grand rounds and resident training stuff which is roughly 4 hours per week.

It's an academic vs. non-academic thing. My site had didactics, grand rounds, board review, etc. and had good experiences in all fields that it had for residency, which was all cores except OB and Peds, and also had Radiology, Cards, Geri, and GI.

I opted to do OB at a new site with only one OB doc and got in on a ton of deliveries/C-sections, circs (he was still the only one doing them there) and some gyn procedures, but I was also on call the whole time, in the OR 2-3 mornings a week, and in clinic 3 days a week since he was the only OB in town and that was his schedule.

My Peds rotation left a lot to be desired, but it was literally my last one of 3rd year, and the doc had just come from some academic center in NYC. He just didn't have a ton of patients on his panel so the outpatient rotation was mediocre (he made us do a lot of presentations though). There were only ever a handful of peds patients admitted, and without much OB there were also only a handful of newborns to round on.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Thats the point tho, at my rotations you just cant get out of doing stuff if you arent interested

thats insane to me, even in em you might have to deal with obstetric emergencies our EM residents rotate through L&D for a month.

Same on all accounts. We can’t get out of doing stuff just because we aren’t interested, and our EM residents do L&D for a month too.

 

[Roxas]

I agree. The general advice on this thread is residents> no residents so I will take this advice. To the M3/4s, residents and physicians thank you all for your comments/insight

Slow down there buckaroo, we're not done arguing yet.

 

[Doctor_Strange]

My core site is a teaching hospital with multiple residencies, however the hospital doesn’t have OB at all. So for OB it’s preceptor based, and the deliveries are at a nearby hospital and Gyn surgeries are at my home hospital. ObGyn was actually a more intense month than either of my surgery rotations. I was on call 24/7 and scrubbed into every C-section or surgery, and every labor and delivery, as well as a full office schedule with a spectrum of experiences.

TLDR; I find your situation peculiar and I’m a DO student who had a preceptor-based ObGyn rotation.

Yeah, it's a peculiar situation. Part of it is that the OBGYN that students were assigned had a stroke I believe and it threw this particular rotation off balance. The school had to arrange this set up relatively quickly. I just got the short end of the stick. But for me, personally, it hasn’t been a huge loss only since I don’t have interest in OBGYN and have no desire to be on 24/7 call or anything like that lol

 

[Deecee2DO]

Slow down there buckaroo, we're not done arguing yet.

Righhttttt its sdn i forgot

 

[fldoctorgirl]

Thank you for the replies, I really appreciate it! Definitely helps put things in perspective, especially with the falling through scenario - that seems like a nightmare greater than what it's worth.

In terms of the KC rotation locations, do they offer wards-based for (at least) IM ??? Definitely understand what I'm signing up for with DO schools, but (already) a little frustrated how they severely lack in this aspect and trying to convince them and do something otherwise is like moving mountains, especially once you realize how important this stuff is in the real world of medicine. My institution won't offer an invite (even for a sub-i) to any student who's only done preceptor based M3 rotations in the field (which includes one of the MD schools in the city). You think that programs would start to beef up these program components....

Don't wanna derail the thread, but you can try to go to a site that has residents or is more inpatient. Or, if you're at KC, there are inpatient rotations for IM but if you don't get one you get 3 electives in M3 and you can do inpatient rotations then.

 

[Leo260]

Don't wanna derail the thread, but you can try to go to a site that has residents or is more inpatient. Or, if you're at KC, there are inpatient rotations for IM but if you don't get one you get 3 electives in M3 and you can do inpatient rotations then.

Thanks so much for answering this! I really appreciate you all taking the time out to answer this, makes me feel a ton better about matriculating.