Preparing for Family Medicine Residency in M4 Year

[imasoga]

Hi all,

I have enjoyed reading the posts in the Family Medicine section for several months now. I have decided to pursue Family Medicine as my career and would like to ask for some advice.

I am starting my fourth year of medical school at East Carolina University in a month. I have set up what I think will be a very good year full of great learning. My question is this: are there any books that you would recommend reading during this time? I have looked into buying Rakels Textbook of Family Medicine and reading it slowly throughout the year. Would that be a good idea?

Any recommendations the residents or attendings have for preparation would be greatly appreciated. My goal is to hit the ground running my intern year!

Also, any other general pearls would be appreciated as well. Thank you for your help!

I look forward to posting more in the coming months.

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[dr_almondjoy_do]

Read Swanson's 6th Edition. Read up on the topics you have trouble in from there in the textbook of Family Med. You will be golden. No need to do any more. Maybe go through Boards and Wards again if you didn't during med school.


Good luck!

 

[HelloGoodbye]

Sorry to rehash an old thread! Is there anything you guys recommend before starting residency next year? I have been reading AAFP topic articles that correlate with which patients I am seeing.

Thanks everyone!

 

[MonsterAddict]

This is something I am worried about as well. I thought about trying to do a couple weeks on IM and Peds wards just to remember how to manage the simple things...

 

[smq123]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Transitioning into intern year is hard, pretty much no matter what you do to prepare for it. A little light reading is fine, but doing a bunch of wards rotations as your last rotations of 4th year is probably a little overkill.

 

[HelloGoodbye]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Transitioning into intern year is hard, pretty much no matter what you do to prepare for it. A little light reading is fine, but doing a bunch of wards rotations as your last rotations of 4th year is probably a little overkill.

Thanks for the response! I am not planning on any "tough" rotations before residency begins (only 4 left!).

However, would you recommend reading any book...like the Swanson's mentioned above? I just want to stay sharp, so I am "top of my game" before residency starts!

Thanks again!

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

Thanks for the response! I am not planning on any "tough" rotations before residency begins (only 4 left!).

However, would you recommend reading any book...like the Swanson's mentioned above? I just want to stay sharp, so I am "top of my game" before residency starts!

Thanks again!

Nope, enjoy 4th year

 

[cabinbuilder]

No, just enjoy the end of 4th year. Know that when you hit residency the learning curve is steep and approach it as if you "know nothing". Be able to do an H &P an the rest will come. Listen, learn, take care of the patients.

 

[styphon]

I would also enjoy 4th year. Intern year is tough no matter what you do - studying vs clinical experience/practice are two vastly different things.

 

[HelloGoodbye]

Thanks again for reaffirming what I needed to hear! Time to chill out before residency starts!

 

[J-Rad]

Showing my personal bias: I'll throw in for an outpatient focused pediatric cardiology rotation. If you're going to see kids, and especially if you are going to practice in a fairly rural area where FM docs are going to take care of cardiac kids as their primary docs, this could be a really helpful rotation. A good one will make you much more comfortable with the many kids with murmurs that will come though your clinic and with other common childhood cardiac and seemingly cardiac complaints. It'll help you get a handle on pediatric ECGs. It also shouldn't be a really stressful rotation.

 

[betamale]

IM: MKSAP 16 + Washington Manual
EM: Tintinalli's + ACLS manual

 

[Aegis]

So I might be a little off place in chiming in, but I've gained sort of interesting perspective on this over the last couple of years. In short, I'm a flight surgeon in the Air Force that's going to be separating and applying to family medicine next year. I did an intern year only after med school and then the AF threw me out the door to practice on my own. Scary right? Well, I've deployed now 5 times for over 19 months, often as the only provider. The pace is pretty much feast or famine and we all can feel our knowledge slipping away. I've experimented with all kind of different ideas about what to study to just keep up my knowledge, to prepare for future residencies, etc. Nothing can replace learning your gut, and trusting your management, and that's mostly what residency is about. But, through trial and error I've come across some study lessons that I think are high yield. For one, trust thy apps. Ya, it's not going to help you on the boards, or inservice, but in real life it will. So generally speaking if you can come up with a diagnosis, do you really need to know all the treatment options off the top of your head if medscape and epocrates are in your pocket? So I've found the most high yield thing you can study is a book like differential diagnoses, start expanding your workups for different conditions based on DDs. The treatments are on your phone if you know what your looking up. Second think about the things you need to know on the fly and can't look up. Trauma protocols, EKG interpretation, maybe some Xray interpretation . If you want to build a good foundation it's about finding 20% of the information you need to know without electronic aids that will answer the question 80% of the time, and you can go from there.