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- May 14, 2010
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Hey guys, I'm sitting around here with not much to do for the next month, anxiously awaiting the beginning of my internship. I guess I'd be considered a designated IM prelim--I matched as a categorical in a different specialty, but my advanced program basically assigns us into the dept. of medicine for intern year, meaning no custom-designed year that includes a variety of specialties.
The IM program is pretty large; I'd guess there are going to be at least 50 interns from a wide range of career plans: categorical IM, combined specialties (like med-peds), designated prelims like myself, and undesignated prelims who matched to advanced programs elsewhere. The official word out of my advanced program is that we are to be treated like medicine interns, i.e. no meddling from my program to give us better treatment than the other interns. Which I'm fine with. However, I was wondering how IM programs tend to treat prelims compared to categoricals or combined folks because we are gone after a year...such as less preferable schedules (more ICU and/or night float), lower priority for elective choices and vacation requests, and less focus on education. My optimistic guess is that things won't be much different beyond the random variation that occurs in any large department, but it would be nice to hear the thoughts from anyone who's been through this, either as a categorical or prelim. Thanks. And sorry if this was better suited to a different forum such as internal medicine.
The IM program is pretty large; I'd guess there are going to be at least 50 interns from a wide range of career plans: categorical IM, combined specialties (like med-peds), designated prelims like myself, and undesignated prelims who matched to advanced programs elsewhere. The official word out of my advanced program is that we are to be treated like medicine interns, i.e. no meddling from my program to give us better treatment than the other interns. Which I'm fine with. However, I was wondering how IM programs tend to treat prelims compared to categoricals or combined folks because we are gone after a year...such as less preferable schedules (more ICU and/or night float), lower priority for elective choices and vacation requests, and less focus on education. My optimistic guess is that things won't be much different beyond the random variation that occurs in any large department, but it would be nice to hear the thoughts from anyone who's been through this, either as a categorical or prelim. Thanks. And sorry if this was better suited to a different forum such as internal medicine.