MCATHELP said:
thanks for the posts. i guess i'm a little confused though. from what i've heard at umdnj som you have to rotate at the three (?) affiliated hospitals. you have to work "within system." but it seems like with pcom there are a lot of hospitals you can rotate at. do they have mandatory hospitals you have to rotate at during 3rd year?
I just came across this post and I'm unsure whether is has been answered on the last few pages but I will do the best I can to clarify this.
PCOMs affiliate list is long and has many different sites for rotations.
The way rotations are structured can be found here:
http://www.pcom.edu/Clinical_Education/Third_and_Fourth_Year_Programs/Third-_and_Fourth-Year.html
Each clerkship is one month unless otherwise noted:
Third year clerskships include: Peds, OB/GYN, Psych, IM, Cardio, Family, OMM/Family, Gen Surgery, Specialty Surgery, IM Selective and Radiology.
Fourth year clerkships include: IM, Rural Medicine, Urban Medicine (2 months), EMed, Sub-Internship, Ambulatory Surg/Surg Sub-I, 5 electives.
Near winter break of MS-II you will be placed into rotation groups. This is done by a lottery system...no need to worry about the details yet.
There are 11 rotations groups and each group has 22-25 students in it and it is among these 22-25 students that you will select your rotation site. You are given a list of the core rotations, all of which must be done at the listed sites, along with the hospitals that offer each rotation.
For example...it will look something like this:
Family Medicine
Hospital A - 3 spots
Hospital B - 1 spot
Hospital C - 4 spots
...
Hospital Z - 2 spots
Now, here is where things get tricky. Some rotations have many spots. So lets say Peds has 30 spots...higher likelihood that no one in the group will have to go to their absolutely last choice.
Some rotations ONLY have as many spots as there are students in the group. So lets say Cardiology has 25 spots...each spot will fill up.
There are also MUST FILL sites. For Urban Medicine there are 4 PCOM clinics which MUST fill each of there spots before any other person in the rotation group can select another site. So if there are 20 MUST FILL spots and 24 students, only 4 will get to go somewhere other than a PCOM clinic.
Dont worry...the rotations arent all too restrictive with non-core rotations.
For your electives you can pretty much do anything...and go anywhere. And 5 electives is really pretty nice.
Just as an example, here is a list of some of the places I rotated at:
City Avenue Peds
Roxborough Hospital
Northeastern Hospital
Mercy Catholic Medical
Misericordia
Lankenau Hospital
Abington Hospital
Mercy Suburban Hospital
Surgical Orthopedic Associates
Chestnut Hill Hospital
Frankford Hospital - Bucks County Campus
Sacred Heart Hospital - Allentown
I hope this has helped clarify some of this. Its really not something to worry about just yet. Concentrate on meeting people and passing Anatomy.
I will see all of you around the end of October when I will be back on OMM Teaching Fellowship. I will be coming off 4 straights months of surgical electives so please excuse me if my appearance at that time is a little slovenly!
Cheers
JPHazelton
