Is there anyone who supports the argument for site B: no residents around=more procedures for medical student?
While this is a common myth, the truth is that you may not get to perform more procedures than at a site with residents, often because the hospitals without residents have lower case volume. My understanding of trauma level classifications is that trauma Level II just means that they have a wider range of surgical specialists who are on-call (not in-house, like a Level I - someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, haha).
Another argument against site B is that "
they've never had students there," which should be a giant red flag. Hearing from some of my classmates that have done rotations at sites where students have never rotated there, it sounds like a **** show, especially if it's your first rotation and no one tells you what responsibilities you have or what you should be doing. And sometimes, the nurses/scrub techs can be downright hostile to new students because they don't know what they're doing (but how should the students know if it's their first rotation??).
The teaching is very attending/preceptor dependent, so if you don't get an attending who likes to teach, the rotation turns out to be a colossal waste of time (aka you're screwed for other rotations where you'll be asked to demonstrate your knowledge). Example that I'd heard about from a classmate: he went through 2 months of Internal Medicine at a hospital without residents, without doing a SINGLE H&P. (wtf?!) He didn't learn how to do an H&P until his next rotation, Surgery. So while you can get lucky and get an awesome attending who loves to teach, it won't be the same as working with the residents, attending rounds, presenting patients, etc.
My vote: go with Site A and count your lucky stars that your school even has hospitals with residents and that has had students rotate there before.
As an aside, this thread should be required reading for pre-meds to read--there really are negatives to attending brand-new schools and applicants need to perform their due diligence in researching the clinical experience these schools provide.
^^ a thousand times, THIS. Please please please do not choose a school based on the pre-clinical education, which will most likely be similar everywhere but can be remedied through hard work and putting in the time yourself. The only way to remedy ****ty clinicals is to do electives at places with teaching programs, but then you're doing double the work when you really should have learned during the actual core rotation.
Sorry for the rant.. haha
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