Third year clerkships

[MSPsych]

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Will someone please explain the third year clerkship process to me? I've seen a few posts where people say they have moved across the country for a clerkship for an entire year, some people don't mention moving at all. I am very confused. I'm going into psychiatry. I am applying for medical school next year (I have no idea where I'll be going yet, I'm going to apply to every place I can in the vicinity of my husband's duty station and anywhere near my family so I will have some type of support system wherever I go). I have no problem with a one year separation from my husband for school (we've done deployments, we can do this), I just would really like to know how the third year works.
Also, how does the fourth year work? Do you have to move for it? Stay at the same place as your third year? Go back to your original school? Please help! Thanks! 🙂

 

[FSU2013]

Very few med schools in the states do this. Some schools will have affiliated hospitals in other areas where they may send you for a rotation or two (i.e. if you're weak in peds they may send you to a regional children's hospital or if you're weak in psych they may send you to the state hospital), but that's only a month or two.

A lot schools that are in the Caribbean do stuff like that, but I don't know much about them.

My school (MD school in the states) is a bit of an odd one in that we have "regional campuses" around the state, but this is uncommon.

You will have to do some 'externships' during your fourth year where you go to other institutions and basically audition for a month. If you end up going into psych, you may not have to do this. Psych is pretty easy to match into.

Good luck.

 

[partydoc]

Will someone please explain the third year clerkship process to me? I've seen a few posts where people say they have moved across the country for a clerkship for an entire year, some people don't mention moving at all. I am very confused. I'm going into psychiatry. I am applying for medical school next year (I have no idea where I'll be going yet, I'm going to apply to every place I can in the vicinity of my husband's duty station and anywhere near my family so I will have some type of support system wherever I go). I have no problem with a one year separation from my husband for school (we've done deployments, we can do this), I just would really like to know how the third year works.
Also, how does the fourth year work? Do you have to move for it? Stay at the same place as your third year? Go back to your original school? Please help! Thanks! 🙂

My rotations have all been at hospitals nearby.

I have friends at DO schools who are in NY one month, OH the next, etc.

I have a friend at an MD school (in NY) who somehow did his peds in cali.

I have friends at carribean schools that might be in one location for a couple of months and then go across the country for the next couple months.

It really depends on how your school is set up. Something to look at when you are applying.

Fourth year is pretty much the same way, because most schools let you set it up how you want. But we have a limit on how many away rotations we do (3).

 

[Siggy]

I'm at a DO school and there's a few different circumstances. The following is for 3rd year as 4th year is very flexible (only 1 mandatory core with freedom to set up our electives and sub-Is based on away rotations and other schedule issues like interviews) We just opened up a branch campus up in Oregon and as we were finishing construction we had a Northwest track. Students accepted into that had their first 2 years in So. Cal. with their second 2 years in Oregon. Unfortunately a handful of So Cal track people got a short end of the stick and ended up being forced up there. However if you're up there you stay up there, including the quarterly didactic week (shelf exams, OSCE, intro lectures)

Similarly, we have a branch hospital in a county about 2 hours away. While their diadactic week is on the main campus, they're supposed to have all of their rotations at that hospital. Besides that, all but a handful of our rotations are more than an hour away from campus. Thus rotations are clearly marked and generally enough people are looking for that specific spot that no one is going to be "stuck," say, doing OMM in Hawaii or Florida. The downside, however, is that most people only spend a handful of months at any one rotation, so you can easily have an hour drive one direction one month followed by an hour drive in the opposite direction the next month. Most people don't get enough rotations at the same hospital to make it worth moving near that hospital.

Our rotations are set up into tracks of 4 blocks lasting 3 months each (IM/IM/Psych, FM/Surg/IM, Peds/OB (both 6 week rotations), OMM/Elective/Vacation). Individual tracts are assigned via lottery. Following that we have a week to trade tracks, followed by a week to trade blocks, followed by a week to trade individual rotation sites.