Preperation for rotations

[Perrotfish]

Alright, I'm a little more than one week away from starting my first rotation. I will be starting with a month of psychiatry, which is a notoriously easy rotation at my school (8-10 hour days, no weekends, no call, and a not particularly hard shelf exam), and after I am done with psyche I will have a 9 day vacation before my next rotation. After that I will be doing Internal medicine and (hopefully) surgery back to back. Now I am planning to take my vacation as actual vacation, but for the four weeks of light classes I would like to put together some sort of study plan to help get myself ready for surgery and internal medicine, and I'm looking for suggestions. Right now my ideas are:

1) Learning to suture with the kit from apprentice doctor (devoting about 1 hour a day to this)

2) Learning to read EKGs and lots of practice with that (my school does this during the medicine rotations rather than during second year).

Any other ideas?

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[PathMD2010]

Alright, I'm a little more than one week away from starting my first rotation. I will be starting with a month of psychiatry, which is a notoriously easy rotation at my school (8-10 hour days, no weekends, no call, and a not particularly hard shelf exam), and after I am done with psyche I will have a 9 day vacation before my next rotation. After that I will be doing Internal medicine and (hopefully) surgery back to back. Now I am planning to take my vacation as actual vacation, but for the four weeks of light classes I would like to put together some sort of study plan to help get myself ready for surgery and internal medicine, and I'm looking for suggestions. Right now my ideas are:

1) Learning to suture with the kit from apprentice doctor (devoting about 1 hour a day to this)

2) Learning to read EKGs and lots of practice with that (my school does this during the medicine rotations rather than during second year).

Any other ideas?

I assume you just took Step1?

If so, take this time to really relax. Psych is not a bad rotation and any "catch up" you can do in the evenings. EKGs are important for some of the psych meds. You could tie in reading that part of the book with Dubin's ?

IM and Surg will be pretty intense. No reason to add to stress. Look at it as being proactive against burnout. Pools are great, and better with margaritas.

Learning to suture is also a good idea. I found it easier to learn from a surgical resident than the book. Or ask one of the grad seniors going into surgery.

 

[Perrotfish]

I assume you just took Step1?

If so, take this time to really relax. Psych is not a bad rotation and any "catch up" you can do in the evenings. EKGs are important for some of the psych meds. You could tie in reading that part of the book with Dubin's ?

IM and Surg will be pretty intense. No reason to add to stress. Look at it as being proactive against burnout. Pools are great, and better with margaritas.

Learning to suture is also a good idea. I found it easier to learn from a surgical resident than the book. Or ask one of the grad seniors going into surgery.

Taking the step on Wednesday. Like I said I would just use it as decompression time except that I have 5 days off before the rotation that I'm using for relaxing and 9 days of random vacation after the rotation that I'm using for diving and touristing (my school made a scheduling error so we all have a free week), so I feel like I can at least put some work in during the rotation without risking burnout.

Do you think I could ask for help with suturing at the surgery department even though I'm on a different rotation? I do have weekends free. None of the 4th years I know are going into surgery.

 

[Jolie South]

Does your school have a surgery orientation? If so, I wouldn't worry about learning to suture in your spare time. We spent a whole day knot tying and suturing pigs feet before starting actual work.

That being said, even a suture workshop won't prepare you for the OR.

 

[PathMD2010]

Agreed. No need to learn that before orientation. But if he did have a friend that was going into surgery or was a current resident, he could teach him how to do knots with some suture. Start up some muscle memory. It comes pretty fast.

Pigs feet is nothing like skin in resistance. And the kits use rope rather than suture - so I found them only semi useful. That day was painful

 

[EBI831]

ps dont blow off that psych shelf, i know that at my school and numerous others we aren't done with 3rd year...actually june is our last month. so you're up against 3rd years who've taken MANY other shelf exams. so i'd focus on psych as much as you can.
Suturing: should not take 1 hour a day/ seriously. There is an orientation and if so inclined, 1 hour a week max is good enough. Once you've got it, you've got it (though some never get it )
Reading Step Up is never a waste of time. Thumb through it when you can but above all RELAX ....free time is a rare commodity 3rd year

 

[Ashers]

ps dont blow off that psych shelf, i know that at my school and numerous others we aren't done with 3rd year...actually june is our last month. so you're up against 3rd years who've taken MANY other shelf exams. so i'd focus on psych as much as you can.
Suturing: should not take 1 hour a day/ seriously. There is an orientation and if so inclined, 1 hour a week max is good enough. Once you've got it, you've got it (though some never get it )
Reading Step Up is never a waste of time. Thumb through it when you can but above all RELAX ....free time is a rare commodity 3rd year

Totally agree. OP, I started with psych, and I must say, that shelf was the hardest one I took. It's a whole lot of medicine, which if you haven't had yet, makes it a lot more difficult. Make sure you study well for the shelf.

Don't worry about suturing yet. You should learn while in surgery. They don't expect you to be perfect.

We learned about EKGs in medicine -- not in M2 year either. It worked out fine.

 

[Law2Doc]

Alright, I'm a little more than one week away from starting my first rotation. I will be starting with a month of psychiatry, which is a notoriously easy rotation at my school (8-10 hour days, no weekends, no call, and a not particularly hard shelf exam), and after I am done with psyche I will have a 9 day vacation before my next rotation. After that I will be doing Internal medicine and (hopefully) surgery back to back. Now I am planning to take my vacation as actual vacation, but for the four weeks of light classes I would like to put together some sort of study plan to help get myself ready for surgery and internal medicine, and I'm looking for suggestions. Right now my ideas are:

1) Learning to suture with the kit from apprentice doctor (devoting about 1 hour a day to this)

2) Learning to read EKGs and lots of practice with that (my school does this during the medicine rotations rather than during second year).

Any other ideas?

(1) Agree with Jolie South, you will be given a crash course in suturing (usually on pigs feet) when your surgery orientation starts, and many interns will eagerly be willing to give you pointers during down-time if you ask them, so no great need to come in with that info ahead of time. Also it's harder to unlearn bad habits, and you tend to pick those up more frequently if you try to teach yourself rather than have someone show you how it's really done. It's far easier to learn if someone talks you through it as you do it, rather than try to watch a video and parrot it. I would hold off on this.

(2) Agree with the above poster who said read Dubin. It's got a neon orange cover and reads like a grade school primer, but if you make it through that, you will be a guaranteed superstar of the EKG.

In general, you don't really need to prepare that much for rotations. If you can find something fairly brief on each field to read, so you know the key terms/procedures and a few factoids, that might be helpful. But so long as you show up interested, enthusiastic and ready to work, you will do fine.

 

[Perrotfish]

ps dont blow off that psych shelf, i know that at my school and numerous others we aren't done with 3rd year...actually june is our last month. so you're up against 3rd years who've taken MANY other shelf exams. so i'd focus on psych as much as you can.

I'm not sure but I think the psyche shelf here might ot actually be a shelf, but rather a home made exam. I know they do that with family medicine, and for the exact reason you stated: the shelf was killing everyone who hadn't had medicine yet.

Anyway, so it seems like the consensus is: yes for EKGs, no for suturing unless I can find a surgeon to tutor me in addition to the video course. Any other ideas?