As a premed, I wanted know about rotation schedules. What is a typical schedule like in terms of hours, days off etc. What makes up your grades during your 3rd and 4th years. Are they solely bases on an attendings evall? And how does your schedule change from 3rd to 4th year. Even residency ?
Questions about rotations
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mmmcdowe
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You can ask this sort of q in pre-allo. There's probably more medical students there than in this forum even. It is highly variable in terms of time. Some rotations are M-F 9-5, others are six days a week on average with mornings as early as 4:30 and nights (assuming you aren't on call) as late as 11. All of this is highly variable school to school, though. For example, my school doesn't do a lot of overnight call. Grades are a combination of exams and clinical performance. Fourth year you tend to get more say in your rotations, where as 3rd year you rotate through the "core" rotations such as internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and OBGYN.
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Pulmonology was 7AM-2PM with a week off of the 4. Surgery was 5AM to 5PM, and OB/GYN is now 6AM to 6PM. Too much variability to make a general consensus.
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Agreed with the above. It will vary wildly based on school, rotation, the site at which you're doing the rotation, and even the team you're on while you are at the site. In general, though, this is the kind of thing that is good to ask people when you interview at med schools. It gets you important information that doesn't cross the minds of a lot of applicants because it is years into the future, and it makes it clear you are thinking about important factors that may distinguish the school which they may be proud of.
I've had results all over the board. Family med was essentially 9-5, but if my resident ran out of patients I got to go home early. Psych was often 9-2, my day of surgery would start at 5 and usually end 12 to 13 hours later. Where I did OBGYN had low patient volume, so that would start at 7 and then promptly ended as soon as we finished rounding unless there were cases, and since we were housed nextdoor we'd wander back in if a new patient showed up during the work day.
I feel like my current rotation ends before my day even starts. Can't wait to get to the next sub-block of it.
I've had results all over the board. Family med was essentially 9-5, but if my resident ran out of patients I got to go home early. Psych was often 9-2, my day of surgery would start at 5 and usually end 12 to 13 hours later. Where I did OBGYN had low patient volume, so that would start at 7 and then promptly ended as soon as we finished rounding unless there were cases, and since we were housed nextdoor we'd wander back in if a new patient showed up during the work day.
I feel like my current rotation ends before my day even starts. Can't wait to get to the next sub-block of it.
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Huge range. In surgery you might be working 5am to 7pm and stay overnight every 4th day, and get only 4 weekend days off a month. Something like psychiatry, you might be working 9-5 with no weekends on. Your grades are often largely based on attending or senior resident evaluations, with some percentage of the grade based on a standardized shelf exam, which you gave to study for in your own time. Fourth year is different than third in that you have more electives, some of which are easy, and everyone is taking time off to interview (your "real" job during 4th year).
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da8s0859q
What everyone said before me.
Surgery was often 13-14 hour days M-F, with one weekend day being 5 hours or so. Most of us managed a weekend off per four-week block.
Internal medicine, better by several hours overall. More weekends off. Part of the rotation may include late admissions call where we expected to be there from 6:30am to 9pm or so on a q4 basis.
Peds, cross between 8-5 or 9-5 clinic and somewhat longer inpatient weeks.
It just varies a lot.
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Not to mention if you don't want to ever work in a certain field again (say, OB/Gyn) you never, ever have to do a rotation in it again
