Preliminary vs. Categorical

[rdomingo]

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Hi everyone,

I'm a 4th year med student in the process of applying for Neurology through the Early Match, but must now begin looking through IM programs for my preliminary year. I was wondering what the general feeling is towards prelims in medicine programs... do they get treated any differently, in your opinion/experience? Are things like rotations/teaching/workload/etc similar for prelims when compared to categorical IM residents?

Any experiences/advice would be appreciated. Thank you!

Good luck to all

 

[AJM]

It depends greatly on the program. Some programs make no distinction between categoricals and prelims, and in fact, many people will not realize certain interns are prelim until they leave at the end of the year. At these programs, the prelims will have just about the same rotation schedule, call difficulty, and often will have their own continuity clinic.

At other programs, prelims are treated very differently, with different rotations, different numbers of call months (sometimes the schedules are easier than the categoricals, but at some programs they may have to do more of the less popular rotations), and oftentimes no continuity clinic.

It would probably be worthwhile to ask around about the specific programs you're applying to, to find out what the word on the street is about the cultures of the individual programs. You can also ask the residents at the programs on your interview days.

In my personal experience, I have never seen prelims treated differently than categoricals at the the hospitals I've worked at, but I know that's not necessarily true everywhere.