OMFS externship during Holidays a bad idea?

[C.elegans]

Hi. To make a long story short, my dental school is one of those schools that only allow students to go on externships during school vacations (I know, it sucks) and the longest chunk of time we have off during the year is winter break. However, I am having doubts on whether it is a good idea to go on an externship during the week of Christmas. Does anyone on this forum have experience going on OMFS externships during Christmas holiday and if so, how was your schedule like? Was it mostly doing nothing and just standing around, or were there actually alot of patients (trauma and emergency related). I imagine the holiday time is when the ER is busiest, and thus OMS residents getting called for all kinds of stuff??
Same question for current OMFS residents. How is your typical schedule during the month of December and more specifically, the week of Christmas?? I would really appreciate your feedback.

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[FanOfCostco]

Hi. To make a long story short, my dental school is one of those schools that only allow students to go on externships during school vacations (I know, it sucks) and the longest chunk of time we have off during the year is winter break. However, I am having doubts on whether it is a good idea to go on an externship during the week of Christmas. Does anyone on this forum have experience going on OMFS externships during Christmas holiday and if so, how was your schedule like? Was it mostly doing nothing and just standing around, or were there actually alot of patients (trauma and emergency related). I imagine the holiday time is when the ER is busiest, and thus OMS residents getting called for all kinds of stuff??
Same question for current OMFS residents. How is your typical schedule during the month of December and more specifically, the week of Christmas?? I would really appreciate your feedback.

I'm not sure about this, but do they even offer externships during Christmas break?

 

[PokerDonk11]

I would contact the programs where you want to extern and ask if there is availability. More often then not, they will let you know if you will get a good experience. They'll let you know if attending's are on vacation or if it's going to be a slow OR week. From my experience a lot of the winter break spots were taken once I started contacting the programs.

 

[sgv]

Most programs slow down during the big holidays. Attendings will take time off, attendings don't schedule OR cases during peri-holidays, and clinic appointments are kept to a minimum. All of these factors significantly dilute your extern experience. If a program director is taking time off, you wouldn't be able to interact with him/her. You wouldn't see a program's typical weekly breadth in OR case diversity. So if you extern with a purpose of checking out a program's surgical experience, externing during one of the slowest week of the year wouldn't accurately portray the program.
But you do what you have to do. An externship during the peri-holidays is better than no externship.

 

[omfsing]

My dental school also didn’t designate any time for externships either and I also went during breaks. Going during Christmas was a waste of time just because certain days the clinic was closed. But regardless of when you go, you need to have something on your resume otherwise programs are not going to take you seriously. Even if it’s slow, you’re going to see something and you will learn something as small as it may be.

 

[rianomous]

Agree with the comments above. Most programs will slow down but adding couple weeks of externship on your resume will still be better than no externship. My program usually slows down during the holidays as well but we always have surgeries scheduled throughout the holidays. In addition to that, we usually get trauma heavy with some SIGSW at the end of the year so sign up for an externship at Knoxville if you are interested.

 

[C.elegans]

Agree with the comments above. Most programs will slow down but adding couple weeks of externship on your resume will still be better than no externship. My program usually slows down during the holidays as well but we always have surgeries scheduled throughout the holidays. In addition to that, we usually get trauma heavy with some SIGSW at the end of the year so sign up for an externship at Knoxville if you are interested.

Does Knoxville allow externs to come over during the week of Christmas? Other than Knoxville, do any other programs allow externs to come during Christmas?