Order of rotations

[Abcdefghijkl]

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I'm in second year just starting to pick the order of my clerkship rotations for next year. Any advice in terms of when I should put what? I'm most definitely not interested in surgery....other than that, I'm pretty open to ideas....thoughts anyone?

Oh, all our electives are done in 4th year and we have to pick them in January of 3rd year.

 

[ChocolateKiss]

There's a thread on this in the stickies section.

 

[phillyfornia]

i'm not sure how ur school is set up but this is how i did mine:

i started off with medicine. i think it's good b/c you'll be fresh off your boards and have all of your step 1 minutiae fresh in your head which always seems to impress attendings. i wouldn't worry about starting off with medicine b/c residents/attendings understand that you're a new 3rd yr med student so they expect NOTHING from you. it'll be easy to impress them.

then i moved onto surgery which i had no desire to do. i think this was good b/c a lot of the surgery shelf was medicine. also, i knocked it off during the winter months. it's a heck of a lot less depressing going to the hospital on a cold, snowy day than on a bright, sunny one.

after that i had my winter break. when i returned, i got OB/GYN out of the way. after that was over, the rest of my year was pretty chill.

i did peds next and then psych afterwards. i finished the year off with family. i recommend this b/c the family shelf is a little bit of everything (medicine/surg/psych/peds/ob) so if you do it at the end of the year, it'll be much easier.

i liked my schedule b/c it allowed me to get all of the hard rotations done in the beginning of the year so that i could get wasted with my 4th year buddies during the end of the year. there are other people out there, however, that decided to ease into their 3rd year with psych and end their year off with something that they wanted to go into (since you are definitely more comfy in the hospital at the end of the year). it all comes down to your personal preference.

 

[Shodddy18]

I would say medicine is probably the place to start. That will set you up pretty well for third year. I think starting with surgery or OB would suck.

 

[Abcdefghijkl]

what about starting with surgery since i know i don't want to go into surg and so when i suck 'cause i'm just a new 3rd year and i don't even know my way around the hospital it's ok because i'm not trying to impress those people anyway really

 

[Anka]

what about starting with surgery since i know i don't want to go into surg and so when i suck 'cause i'm just a new 3rd year and i don't even know my way around the hospital it's ok because i'm not trying to impress those people anyway really

There are significantly more gentle environments in which to suck. All joking aside, surgery and medicine are rotations where you're going to learn a lot. Even if you don't plan on going into either of them, they're rotations to pay attention to -- which is hard when you're still trying to figure out mechanics.

Best,
Anka

 

[ESPNdeportes]

In the end, it probably doesn't matter all that much, so just keep that in mind.

I guess a near consensus reccomendation is that if you're pretty sure you know what you wanna go into, don't do it first or last. If you do it first, you could still be getting basic things down that can take away from your learning. If you do it last, it can be troublesome because you'll need to schedule your 4th year before you've finished that rotation, so that can be tricky.

Another thing to to consider is when you need time off. Personally, I was the best man in two weddings earlier this year so I needed rotations that I knew I could have weekends off no problem. So I ranked pathways high that started off with psych and family. It ended up for me that my first six weeks of 3rd year were all electives, followed by psych, family, and surgery before winter break. It was sub-optimal, but now i've got some good experience before medicine and peds (I'm gonna be going into one of those or both) so in the end I'm fine with it.

 

[Abcdefghijkl]

thanks for the advice! i think i'm going to rank pathways with surg first and psych/family last high and pathways with surgery or medicine last low (I'm considering medicine and I don't think I'll have enough energy to do well on surgery last). I'm also trying to get medicine before the deadline for picking electives comes around...but that's a bit tricker than I had anticipated.

 

[alimarie81]

I am a MS3 and my track for this year is Family (12 weeks) OB/Gyn (6 weeks) Peds (6 weeks) General surgery (4 weeks) Anesthesia (4 weeks) IM floor (4 weeks) Nephrology (4 weeks) Psych (4 weeks) Elective 4 weeks

The only problem with this is that now I am on general surgery and this is the first "hospital" medicine I have had. Mostly everything else has been outpatient. I feel totally incompetent because I haven't had medicine, and I cannot function at an appropriate level due to my lack of IM ward experience (writing orders, knowing basics of hospital care, etc)

If I had to do it over, I would have tried to put medicine a little earlier...our school suggested putting your "field of choice" later in your third year, but if that means medicine, then you may be going into it with not enough preparation....or maybe my rotations have just been crap. You can only learn so much from the books if you aren't putting those concepts into practice in the clinics. That has been a big problem with some of my rotations- not very many sick people- not enough of the basics.
Good luck.