ziffy 850 said:
We go from one rotation to another with shelf exam at the end, typically a week-end off and then the next rotation.
How do you prepare? Assuming you know NOTHING (as with me and OBGYN), do you read Blueprints or other material BEFORE you start so you don't look like an idiot, or do you just go with the flow and pray you don't look stupid?
2 Main things on every rotation.
1. what a typical writeup looks like including H&P, and progress notes.
2. Knowing the basic path, and pathophys you'll see. This allows for development of a knowledgable ddx list, and what tests to order.
How to go about preparing for each one.
1. Writeups in FA-Wards is really good. Use them as a template, and as you do more writeups, you'll learn how to get fancy with your notes.
2. Kaplan books are a great resource for getting a strong foothold on the subject. You can read the average book in a few days, and then reference anything in a text/UTD etc... if you don't quite get it. If you have a PDA, get diagnosaurus, and epocrates, as well as an ob-wheel program. If you can afford it, get 5mcc from skyscape, or harrisons. Both are great.
These two, coupled with plenty of patient consults/admits/H&P's should help you nail the shelf. Also, if you're easy to get along with, and dont act like a pric k, you should be able to pull off honors in all rotations. This assumes you don't have any evaluators with a grudge.
As a small example of this, I did great on my rotations, and did pretty well on the shelfs using the above strategy. The reason I mentioned grudges is b/c during my peds rotation I had about 9 evaluators. All of them wrote glowing comments, and gave me high pass/honors marks except for 1. One of my evaluators wrote :Needs to be more involved with pt care, etc... and gave me a few low passes, and a couple fails on my eval. After I finished the rot, I went to see my evals at the deans office, and discuss the rot w the dean. When I read her eval, all I could do was laugh b/c I know for a fact that I was very involved with the treatment, and care of my patients, yet she still found a way to slam me. Anyhow, after I quit laughing, the dean looks at me and says "looks like you just read Dr. XXXXX's eval." with a knowing grin on his face. Well the long and short of this is that her eval was way off of the majority, so it was kinda disregarded in the final eval. Turns out, I did pretty darn well on that rotation anyway, as well as doin well on the shelf.
Anyhow, gl on 3rd year. It's a hell of a year, but if you can do the above, let the insults/remarks slide off you, and manage to be a smiling face, then you'll come out on top in terms of knowledge, evals, and readiness to tackle 4th yr rotations with dignity.
btw, you're expected to know 3rd yr stuff cold during 4th. If a new onset chf-er comes in and you're the sub-i on board, you better damn well know what questions to ask, what labs to order, and how to write the admission or else you'll look like an a s s in front of your peers.
I think I may have overilled it on this reply.
