Noncat experience question

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sosnoncat

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Can anyone who has done a noncat as the ONLY noncat in your program speak to your experience?
Wondering if mine is normal. Were you treated similarly to PGY1's?
I am in a program where the noncat is quite isolated from the rest of the program. Retracting all day, berated for orders for those cases, then just a ton of scut. Zero time doing anything clinical myself other than retracting. The PGY1s have a completely different schedule and are encouraged to assign the noncat tasks etc. It feels ****ty/boring/isolated, and everyone is kind of a dick. Is this just how it is?

Thanks
 
Sounds like a bad place to be a non-cat. My program treats the non-cats as near equals (minus a less OR time since theres only so many cases to go around). I believe that the only place categoricals should get priority over a non-cat is with the OR and maybe some more advanced cases in clinic, and that is because the non-cat will (hopefully) match and then go to the OR more during their categorical year the following year. All scut work and call duties should be split up evenly amongst all the cats and non-cats.
 
Yeah that sounds pretty crappy. The upside is that it sounds like you are spending significant amounts of times with the attendings. Which is great for getting LORS. Did previous non cats have a high match rate?
 
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