UCLA vs UCSD

[UCLAstudent]

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Also there is much less teaching on the wards.

This has definitely not been my experience. I feel that I get plenty of teaching. On neurology, my chief resident would sit down with me everyday and work through neuro cases with me, sometimes for 2-3 hours at a time. On IM, I would be assigned weekly presentations to give to my team. The interns would also be assigned presentations. It was a good chance for everyone to learn things. Whenever there was some downtime, my IM senior residents would sit me down and teach me. My attendings also loved to teach on IM --- I had two nephrologists, three hospitalists, and one ID specialist as my attendings during 8 weeks of IM, so I got to learn about a range of topics. Oh, and I got pimped a lot, which is "learning" in itself. 😉

Also I did many more procedures (eg chest tubes, lac repair, I/Ds, delivering babies, paracentesis, lumbar puncture etc) at UCSD than I see the UCLA studnets doing.

I don't agree with this, either. I did a lot of paracenteses at UCLA during my IM rotation, usually 2 per week. UCLA has a lot of liver failure patients and has a large liver transplant program, so there were plenty of plenty of patients needing to be tapped. I delivered babies on Ob/Gyn at UCLA and did my own ultrasounds on triage patients. At Cedars, there are even more opportunities to deliver babies (statistically, there is 1 baby born/hour at Cedars, lol). During my trauma surgery rotation at Harbor there were plenty of opportunities to suture lacerations and put in chest tubes. Trauma at Harbor is very hands-on for med students because it is so busy. Not to mention, there's a procedure service elective during MS4 where you get to do that stuff all day long. There are plenty of opportunities to do procedures. 🙂

 

[twizzlers]

... My experience is that that the UCLA students have a much less organized clinical role and are sometimes lost. Also there is much less teaching on the wards.

As a 4th year at UCLA, I actually agree with this. The teaching on UCLA 3rd year rotations was really hit or miss. Sometimes you'll get lucky (IM at Olive View), sometimes you won't (Trauma Surgery at Cedars - I did not see a single surgery the entire 3 weeks! What the hell kind of a surgery rotation is that?) The outpatient surgery rotations were also a joke. Most of the time, nobody cared that you were there, and nobody told you what you were supposed to do. I asked to try intubating three times on anesthesiology, attending refused everytime.

4 weeks of Ambulatory medicine - another joke. Resident left at 2:30 pm most afternoons, had hair/nail appointments scheduled for 3 pm. Cedars Internal Medicine, you'll get max 2 patients at once, because the teams are so large the residents refuses to give you anymore. My IM attending didn't know my name, and taught NOTHING on rounds - not to me, not to anybody else. Neuro at UCLA, again an Attending who couldn't be bothered to teach anything, despite making us round at 7 pm. OB/GYN: half the patients were private, so I couldn't touch them. Family Medicine: Residents too overwhelmed/busy to teach.

Also, UCLA only wants you to take overnight call for OB/GYN and inpatient surgery; other med schools will expect more. Overnight call sucks while you're doing it - but still is an invaluable experience. (And no, you can't just volunteer to do it, because you'll have lectures scheduled for next afternoon)

Overall, I would say the quality of 3rd year rotations varies widely at UCLA, based to a large degree on which hospital you're doing them at. Some people will have amazing experiences with great teaching... others, not so much.

 

[SoCal4LifeMD]

i should probably start a different thread for this, but what're people's thoughts on USC vs. UCSD?

 

[EpiPEN]

i should probably start a different thread for this, but what're people's thoughts on USC vs. UCSD?

Are you jumping ships on us now? don't make you hunt you down at second look😀

 

[lord_jeebus]

i should probably start a different thread for this, but what're people's thoughts on USC vs. UCSD?

One is a lot more expensive than the other

You probably get an awesome trauma experience at USC.