Off Service Rotation Choices

[Old&InTheWay]

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I have to decide on my 4 off-service months. Can be any combo of IM, inpatient FM, or Peds. I am about 50/50 on doing CAP fellowship. Any suggestions as to what would be most useful?

 

[Armadillos]

Personally I would just find out which service is most friendly and most willing to teach psych residents.

 

[Amygdarya]

Personally I would just find out which service is most friendly and most willing to teach psych residents.

Ditto.

Aside from this, even if you’re potentially interested in CAP and have an opportunity to do some pediatrics, I’d still do more adult medicine because it’ll be useful on your adult inpatient months and calls in the first 2 years, and by the time you reach the fellowship you’ll forget all the medicine anyway 🙂

 

[Stagg737]

Agree with Armadillos, it's important to actually be able to learn. At some programs the off-service people are basically treated like extra hands with most teaching just being self-learning. Ask around and find out if any of those rotations are like that and avoid them. Otherwise just do what you think you'd enjoy and what would be most useful.

 

[Celexa]

I have to decide on my 4 off-service months. Can be any combo of IM, inpatient FM, or Peds. I am about 50/50 on doing CAP fellowship. Any suggestions as to what would be most useful?

Your experience is going to be dictated by your team more than anything. At my residency you talk to anyone about the off service rotations and you get an unpredictable mix of statements on which rotations are marginally better based on who they had the good or bad luck to work with.

Which is to say unless one service is significantly more dominated by dinguses you might as well flip a coin.

Peds was definitely NOT a way to work with nicer people at either my med school or residency for what it's worth, despite this seeming to be a common wisdom I hear around.

 

[Old&InTheWay]

Thank you all for the advice!

 

[Monocles]

At least try to get 1-2 months of peds if it's not too killer of a rotation. That way you'll know some of the basic medical issues that kids have, and also have a better understanding of whether or not you enjoy working with the kiddos! 🙂

 

[alina_s]

Inpatient peds was hands down the most painful rotation of my intern year, and I chose two months of inpatient medicine. What I learned there hasn’t been helpful as a child psychiatrist- the fields are just too wildly different. It was RSV season, assembly line admissions and discharges with no cap. Inpatient child psych, in my second year, was much more influential in deciding to go to fellowship.