krabmas, any particular reason would choose NYCPM over Temple? Just wondering, as I am making my decision between them.
I did not attend temple so I cannot say what htey have or do not have. I only know my experience at NYCPM and have seen some students from Temple.
There are good and bad students from every school.
Choose the environment that you think you can excell in.
Things I liked about NYCPM:
1. The Family like atmosphere. It is a small school with little burocracy (sp?). This is a relative comparison. The other schools all have big umbrella unuversities (exceot ohio) that govern all the decisions. It is nice to be able to talk to the Dean whenever the whim arrises.
2. External hospital rotations (clinic) in 3rd and 4th year. Also the school clinic. I've said this before and Harkless said it first. You see what you know and diagnose what you know. If all you know is fungal nails then that is all you see and all you'll treat. If you look past the fungal nails and see patholgy, work it up and treat it appropriately.
a small tangent - when the patient comes in the clinic room and you say " what brings you in today?" and they say their nails... if you just cut their nails and disregard the rest of the foot, then all you'll do is cut nails and that is all you will learn. If you examine their feet you may find PAD, charcot, tendonitis, warts, xerosis, peroneal spastic flatfoot, residual clubfoot...
When you go to the PCP do you present with your diagnosis? no, you present with your symptoms and the doc works you up, if they catch something else along the way, good medicine would be to treat it.
3. 4th year hospital rotations - gen surg, internal medicine, ER... Again, these are what you make of them and can be somewhat of an uphill battle to change the NY attitude that pods aren't real docs and don't need to know... When I was on gen surg, if all the gen surg cases were covered I'd scrub ortho cases or the early pod cases before the students arrived.
4. small class size ( I went to large university for undergrad) and availability and open door policy of most of the profs.
5. pediatrics. I don't think any of the other schools get the peds exposure that we did. lots of didactic peds classes, and the peds rotation in clinic. Lots of flat feet and in-toeing, psuedobowing, metatarsus adductus... There historically has been little surgical treatment of the peds pathology, but you learn how to do an entire lower extremity orthopedic peds exam and practice it more than full traditional H&Ps and learn non-surgical treatments for peds deformities. On the rare occasion there will be a clubfoot or rare deformity but mostly the clubfeet are treated by pediatric orthopedists (a large part of their specialty).
I hope this helps you make the right decision for you.
