Prelim vs Transition

[undecided05]

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Can those CA's and attendings out there maybe provide some insight (pluses and minuses) as to whether they thought it would be more beneficial or enjoyable to do a Prelim Medicine vs Prelime Surgery vs Transitional year. Thanks in advance.

also, do you need to write a new personal statement for these programs?


Are interviews usually done on the same day if interviewing at the same institution?

 

[2ndyear]

I am doing my Transitional year right now, so I can't tell you exactly what is better for anesthesia as I don't know yet. For me it came down to the electives. I really wanted to do ICU months and peds my internship year just to get a better handle on that stuff before anesthesia. So I am doing both medical and surgical ICU, two months gen. surgery, two months int. medicine, peds, a month of anesthesia and some other electives. Not too bad overall. I could have done OB too (probably should have for gas) but just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to sign up for it. I was really able to tailor my year to what I wanted with TY where with surgery or medicine that is harder. Now whether or not what I want and what is best for preparation remains to be seen. I'll tell ya next year.

The downside to the TY year is that you are homeless. This means you're always the off-service resident and senior residents who make up call schedules can either be nice or crap all over the us off service people.

As far as interviews it's really variable. TY's are harder to come by than prelim years. I checked out a couple that were affiliated on the same interview. Others wanted separate interviews. All depends.