Radiology or ICU

[JoBlo]

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In my senior year before I start intership this summer... should I take a month of radiology or a month of ICU?

I figure the radiology month would be useful because its my only and last chance to spend an entire month 1 on 1 with a radiologist reading CXR, CTs, ext all day every day for a month to try to firm up some skills at reading the Xrays that I will be ordering.

However, I've never had an ICU month and was thinking that maybe I should do a month before graduating so that the first time I'm working in the ICU I won't be 100% clueless... then again, I'll have plently of ICU months during residency and will be missing out on my last chance at learing some radiology...

which do you think would be most beneficial? Opinions welcomed... thanks 🙂

 

[GoofyDoc]

Radiology would be the most useful elective you could take at this point. Don't waste your time on an ICU rotation. You'll do fine w/o it.

 

[Mumpu]

ICU if you've never had any ICU experience. You may start your intern year in ICU on call and if you've never seen a vent and someone on six drips, cross-cover that night can be hellish.

You can learn IM-level radiology on your own time. http://www.med-ed.virginia.edu/courses/rad/ is a very good primer. The nitty-gritty of CTs and MRIs is something you will never be proficient at unless you do radiology or a subspecialty where you look at a lot of these images (pulmonary, onc, etc.).

 

[gutonc]

Can you take a vacation month instead? Both Mumpu and GoofyDoc have excellent points. I didn't do either of them and started in the MICU (on call) in July. It was a rough few days at first but I figured it out pretty quickly. And if you're doing ICU at a decent place you'll have plenty of backup and good nursing, all of which will keep you from killing your patients.

YMMV of course. If you have to take something I'd go w/ the Rads month, assuming it's a benign one. Our basic rads course (which you had to take in order to do anything else) was a month of 9-5, M-F, lecture/quiz on CXRs and AXRs. The last week they rolled out the C/A/P CTs but that was just for fun. If you missed >2 days, you failed, no questions asked. Sure, at the end of the course you could read CXRs like a rock star but, since most EDs are installing CT scanners in the ambulance bay these days, I'm not sure how useful that is in the long run.

 

[GoofyDoc]

ICU if you've never had any ICU experience. You may start your intern year in ICU on call and if you've never seen a vent and someone on six drips, cross-cover that night can be hellish.

True, but I'd rather not waste a month of my life doing an ICU elective as a student when I'm going to be doing it anyway as an intern. It's just not worth it to me. The first day of intern year will be hellish regardless. A good radiology elective on the other hand will make you one step ahead come July. BE, just based on your username, I'm thinking we probably went to the same med school. I took the radiology elective you referred to and I have to say it was the best thing I did in 4th year.

 

[gwen]

go with rads. worry about the ICU when you get there. i loved the ICU, but wouldn't recommend killing yourself over it during your 4th year of med school - that's the time to enjoy!!!

 

[orientedtoself]

go for the radiholiday. i identified pulm htn on a ct thorax today because of the radiholiday month i did as an ms4.

 

[Adcadet]

I vote the the ICU. I did a radiology rotation early in my MS3 year, and an MICU rotation early in my MS4 year - I learned more in the unit and now on other rotations it's so much easier to assess and figure out early interventions on ptients that are crashing.

 

[orientedtoself]

well, the question really is how hard you want to work. an icu sub-i is alot of work. it's very educational and everyone at my school had to do an icu sub-i, so i did one and i learned alot, but you will be fine intern year with or without it.

 

[fantasty]

Maybe this thread should have a poll 🙂

I vote ICU, but I'm not even a fourth year yet. However, I spoke with our IM PD about electives, and he said that most of the interns here feel more confident in the ICU if they either do it late in the 4th year or early in the intern year. (Although, he did also recommend taking electives to fill in gaps for things you won't have much time devoted to during residency).

I guess in some ways, the rad elective may pay off more for long-term learning, but the ICU elective may make life a bit easier in the more immediate future.

 

[sluggo]

ICU is the power move... you can learn a lot if you are serious. We did radiology rounds every day on my ICU sub-I!!