Radiology vs. MICU rotation to prepare for intern year/neuro residency?

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pianosa

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Assuming I will already be doing MS4 rotations in neuroradiology, the neuro-ICU, and internal medicine, would it be better to do a general radiology rotation or a MICU rotation in February to prepare me for intern year? Which would be more useful overall for neuro residency?

I feel like my radiology skills are pretty weak, but I suppose general radiology would only really be helpful for intern year, and I'll already be doing neuroradiology. The MICU scares me, but I think it would be really helpful for my medical knowledge in general. I assume it's very different from the neuro-ICU. Will I be a horrible intern if I have no idea how to handle things in the MICU? I would love to chill in radiology at the end of 4th year, but I would also like to learn as much as possible while nobody's life depends on me.

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i'd argue the MICU rotation is more useful. patient conditions will vary from one hospital's MICU to the next, but i think you'll get a lot of useful exposure to ventilators, respiratory failure, altered mental status 2/2 medical issues, intoxication etc in most MICUs to prep you for your medicine intern year and also may be relevant for your future neuro-ICU and inpatient neuro rotations. IMO getting down the basics of CXR interpretation is among the top priorities as a medicine intern, which the MICU should be giving you plenty of chances for if your hospital's MICU rotation is worth anything at all
 
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I had the same dilemma in my mind and decided to stop after doing neuroICU. I was really surprised how many medicine pearls I got from being in the NICU, but this could vary depending on acuity. For example, if you're at a big academic center you might have a patient with TBI, who is also actively GI bleeding and hypotensive in your NICU. You might have a pulm/crit fellow on your team, or medicine residents. In this situation, theres a lot of MICU overlap and you'll be able to get a lot more comfortable with ICU medicine in general in addition to neuro. Do your NICU rotation, and reevaluate your comfort level. If you still want more just keep your MICU. If not, drop it. If there are specific medicine pearls you want to get better at, you'll likely get exposure to those during your 4th year medicine rotations.
 
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I took radiology a couple of months ago and I have MICU the last block of forth year. I found my radiology elective to be immensely helpful and i feel like if I were to not take it, I’d actually feel incomplete as a doctor if I hadn’t gotten the knowledge that I got from that rotation. Even though we’ll primarily be looking at images of the head in our career, there were lots of fundamental concepts that the rotation taught that I feel like every doctor ought to know. I also feel more comfortable identifying structures, less intimidated by images of different parts of the body, and a basic understanding of different modalities of imaging and their strengths and weaknesses. For this reason, I am actually a proponent of taking radiology instead. You’ll get basic ICU knowledge in your neuroICU rotation.
Really, I think both rotations are important, which is why my school actually requires us to take both. But if you had to choose between the two, I’d say radiology especially if you will already be spending time in an ICU elective even if it’s not specifically MICU.
Hope this helps!
 
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Also think about doing electives that you won't have a chance to do during residency. I rotated on derm
 
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