TUCOM"s ROTATIONS MEDICORE?????

[F/A-18]

Someone posted on another thread, that they were worried about
the quality of rotations for 3rd and 4th year students at TUCOM.

I'm considering applying to TUCOM next year and I want to know if anyone has any info on the quality of rotations at TUCOM.

Why are they medicore?? Poor training sites, poor clinical teaching, What???

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[Avonlea]

Click on search on the top right corner and type in TUCOM or Touro. You can read a bunch of stuff regarding rotations. It seems to me that touro students tend to 1)go the allopathic residency route, 2) chose the school mainly b/c they want to stay in the bay area. Touro was my first choice (b/c of location reasons as well), but after seeing a bunch of other DO schools I'm not sure anymore about anything.

If I had a magic wand I would make my own DO school:
1) TUCOM's location
2) CCOM, KCOM, PCOM's history and reputation
3) UNECOM's gorgeous building and fall foliage, OMM integration
4) MSUCOM's in-state tuition

Then I'd add to touro:
1) preceptorships
2) OMM fellowship opportunities
3) strong osteopathic and allopathic rotations in the bay area
4) a nice quad and green grass

just a few things on my wish list...
<sigh>

 

[tigerlily]

avonlea!

funny i've been telling people almost the same thing! if it were up to me,,,,i'd integrate all those things together too,,,but i think overall pcom and ccom have it the best with location, reputation, rotation availabilities, attractiveness. just my opinions!

i just sent you a pm!

 

[maysqrd]

Avonlea,

I think many people were startled by your use of the term mediocre to describe Touro rotations. I did exactly as you suggested by doing a search on TUCOM AND ROTATIONS and found that the information is two fold. One much of it is outdated and two, most of the negatives come from students that didn't actually attend TUCOM but only interviewed there. Several TUCOM students have added posts regarding criticism of the rotations and I think that if you read all of the posts you will find that TUCOM actually has numerous rotations right in the bay area and students do not need to travel far away unless they want to. In my interview, we specifically asked about the rotations and the ability to stay local and there is a priority list and combined lottery but it did not seem to be that big of an issue to do your rotations at the local hospitals. Check out the list of affliate hospitals on the website for TUCOM and you will see that this list has tripled in the last two years. As for many students wanting to do allopathic residencies, yes 60% of the Class of 2001 went into allopathic residencies because they had been able to network with local programs and MD's from UCSF, Stanford, UC Davis and felt that they would have good opportunities for getting the residency that they wanted and not everyone wanted to go out of state. Southern Cal is the only place in California that currently has DO residency programs. The only way to stay in Northern Cal for residency is to apply for an allopathic match. This issue is being worked on and a full time person had been hired by Touro whose sole job is to build the affiliates with hospitals and try to establish residency opportunities (I asked about this in the interview as well).

I myself will apply to allopathic residencies if that is what it takes to stay out of Southern Cal, otherwise I fully intend to apply to osteopathic residency programs. I grew up in NorCal and love it hear and would not like to go to SoCal but that is just my personal preference.

To actually read posts from Touro students that have gone thru this process I suggest doing a search on the username Leotigers. He is extremely informative and honest about his experience.

 

[Avonlea]

I don't question the 1st and 2nd year. The students don't complain much about that. It's the 3rd/4th year I want to be confident about.

I am NOT a good source for judging the rotation situation at TUCOM, Leotiger or any other graduate/3rd/4th year MS would have a much better opinion. And I DON'T know if the rotations are mediocre or not (I mean the core ones, not the UCSF, Stanford, UCD ones we'd set up ourselves).

At the interview, Touro gave me a list of affiliations. Although they have added several new affiliations, I'll take quality over quantity. Being new, we'll have to wait for MS1 and 2s to tell us how they are. What the quality is, I have no clue.

In fact, I don't know much about any of the places, but leotiger mentioned that some places don't teach, so you have to learn on your own, but you do get to get your hands into a lot. Of course, the quality of the rotation experience depends on several factors like how you learn, what you make of it, the doc you are rotating with, the wide variance of patients and issues you get to encounter, etc. This goes for the "best" and "worst" described rotations. Having said that though, I want to know as much as I can, before I invest $200K.

Sure, those aforementioned schools are big name Great institutions, but how much DO/OMM support/mentorship will I get at those places? I want to be a damn good DO, preferably at TUCOM. How is the question.

 

[slave4MD]

TUCOM's rotations are mediocre? For a COM, it's fine.

But if you ace your USMILE exams, you might just land in your dream hospital someday.

 

[Avonlea]

I found this from a search by "dcdo" written on 1/24/ 2002. He/She rotated at San Pablo (not a teaching hosp). Mentioned that teaching hospitals in cludes: downey, long beach, and san joaquin. Keep in mind that we can choose our top three sites for the lottery, with most people getting 1st or 2nd choice, so I've read. I also found some info about tucom's curriculum from a professor in charge of preclinical affairs. It's pasted after dcdo. Hope this helps everyone.

"Core 3rd year rotations were set up by lottery. Originally they had said it would be by grades, but they subsequently reneged on that one.(I got screwed) Electives are basically set up on your own, but you'll want to do your electives outside anyway at teaching hospitals.

My advice to you would be to DO AS MANY CORE ROTATIONS AT TEACHING HOSPITALS AS POSSIBLE. My only real bump in the road at residency interviews was the fact that my 3rd year medicine rotations were at a non-teaching hospital(thank you lottery!). While the rotation was good(primarily because the Dr was awesome) I still got questions about it, and I'm not sure if I answered it to their satisfaction.

Second piece of advice: Do lots of oral presentations in your 3rd year. In my case, I hadn't done ANY until my first outside elective(ICU!)at the end of 3rd year. Predictably, the first handful of presentations were like oral diarrhea. Fortunately,the rotation went well after and I still got a good grade. Teaching programs are going to expect you do be able to do this when you show up. If your attending doesn't make you do these at the non-teaching hospitals take the initiative and arrange to do them anyway, or even with someone else if he/she isn't so inclined.

Aside from that, it's good to train at a teaching institution early so you're not caught with your pants down when you go out for outside electives, especially at places where you might want to go for residency. Generally speaking, you will have a lot more responsibility and will be expected to be more independent. So get used to this early.

Good luck. If you are mindful of the 2 points above, I feel you will receive the equivalent of training at any other program."

"It just so happens that our single largest class of the first year (about 8 credit hours in the fall semester and 7 in the spring) is called Basic Science Foundations for Osteopathic Medicine. It is an integration of biochemistry, histology, and physiology, taught in a systems format, with osteopathic correlation lectures. The latter are given by our OMM and other DO clinical faculty. To my knowledge we are the only osteopathic medical school that has such a course; it was developed three years ago by our basic science faculty, specifically to encourage students to see the clinical, osteopathic relevance of basic sciences.
Another example of integration: one of the full-time OMM faculty teaches in the anatomy lab so he provides correlations as they arise. Finally, the physical diagnosis course (taught by a DO), although it is a separate course, is scheduled to coordinate with systems as they are taught in anatomy.
In the second year, the largest course is clinical systems. It is closely correlated with pharmacology, pathology, and microbiology/immunology courses. It also includes many osteopathic correlates."

 

[M00se]

I am a 3rd year at TUCOM in my 5th rotation, so I thought I'd throw in my thoughts on our rotations and clear up some stuff.

1. Every student in my class who wanted to do their core rotations in the Bay area got to stay there for at least the 6 month cores, most have schedules for the year in and around the Bay. So Cal was the most difficult to stay in for the year

2. I agree that you should always try to do rotations at a teaching hospital and not all of our hospitals are, but the ones we have were not filled up this year, Las Vegas, New York,etc

3. I am in LV, which used to be a teaching hospital and is now again. I am also doing rotations at 6-7 other hospitals depending on the rotation, all in our network, all in LV. For 4th years, UMC-Las Vegas is in our network and has the second largest ER in the west and a level 1 trauma center. It is also a teaching hospital.

4. I'd like to point out that occasionally it may be better to be at a facility with fewer residents and interns. I say this because I have been 1st assist in almost all of the 50 surgeries Ive done while here at Lake Mead. I also got to deliver babies myself with a Dr assisting ME on my first rotation.

5. The rotations at the school have had to increase every year to keep up with the increasing class size. As the class size is now stable the rotation affilliations will become more tailored to the needs of the students. More rotations in the Bay have already been set up this year.

6. This is just an opinion, but for so many of the students to do so well in the AMA match (at a brand new school) the rotation opportunities here couldn't be all bad.


We share so many sites with other schools that to say we have weak rotation sites is to condemn almost all of the other Osteopathic schools, and some of the Allopathic schools.

Setting up rotations in the Bay has been tough since it is so saturated with big MD schools. And the state pays the hospitals to teach the MD students from state sponsored schools, UCSF,UC-Davis.

I feel my rotations couldn't have been much better, but thats just my opinion...I could be wrong.

 

[SoCal]

Moose...thanks for the insight. I know a lot of us possilbe future students at Touro appreciate your opinion.