Psychiatry away rotations - help!

[quixote1974]

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Hi,
Would appreciate your help on this one. If any of you did away rotations in psychiatry, I'd like to hear how you approched them. My psych experience wasn't typical of big-city and academic programs.

There are several things I'm looking for: so far location-wise, California, Chicago, Boston thus far; places w/ a med-psych program, places where there is medical humanities program, and is not exclusively biologically orientated. I don't think I will absolutely fulfill all of my preferences at one place. The big thing, right now for me, is that I'd like to find a place where I can get a good psychiatric sub-internship level educational experience.

So far, I've been thinking of NWU, UCLA, UCSD, Rush, Tufts, Rochester. How would you approach away rotations? Pick a program that might be hard to get into? Pick a familiar place, or try to see if a new place suits me? Or would you try to find somewhere that has someone you want to work with?

Thanks, Richard

 

[anaismd]

I personally didn't find that my away rotation helped me THAT much. I would suggest you do an away rotation at a place where you'd really like to check the program out and see what its like. It probably does help to do an away rotation somewhere where you'd like to go, but if it is one of the super-competitive programs, it really wont help THAT much. If it is not superconpetitive, then it will have a greater impact on your chances.

 

[alina_s]

Anaismd,
Do you have any advice on how to research programs? I'm starting to think about where I might want to go but the only information sources I know of are word of mouth. How can you find out about a program's balance (psychoanalysis vs biopsych)? I assume that most are oriented more in one direction but I doubt that a program director would say anything other than that the program represents all areas and is very well-balanced. How do you judge a program's competitiveness? I think that I will be able to do only one away elective, so I won't have the chance to "investigate" most programs first hand. Thanks for any advice.

 

[anaismd]

start by reading the residency reviews on scutwork.com
and also read the ones at amsa.org
under resources/career development
sorry i took so long to reply but i didnt realize
this post was here and directed at me
feel free to PM me with anymore questions
i would be happy to help out