When to schedule my neurology clerkship

[nancysinatra]

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Hi folks,

I am a third year med student and about 88% sure I will end up applying for residency in psychiatry. I was wondering if it would be advantageous applicationwise for me to take my neurology clerkship next spring while I'm still a 3rd year as opposed to 4th year, which is when most people at my school take it.

I have a few issues that are making me think this could be important. I have already done my psych rotation, and did well in that, and now I'm in medicine, which I know is also very important. It's going ok but I've been placed on some highly specialized cardiac and cancer units and am not sure how well I'm doing with that. For example I have not had a pnuemonia patient yet unless they also had graft vs. host dz., or a chest pain case where the patient had less than 4 previous valve replacement surgeries. I'm learning a lot but not necessarily acing these cases in the way that befits someone who NEEDS to do well in medicine. I would like to really do well in something and soon, and perhaps that could be neuro?

The only problem is that in order to fit neuro into 3rd year, I'll have to move Ob/Gyn to 4th year. I have a terrible dread of Ob/Gyn and am worried about putting something so grueling off til the end. But if it would benefit me to do neuro early and do well in it, I will take that risk and shuffle my schedule around. Also, perhaps it would benefit me to take neuro before I start doing any psych electives?

I apologize if this question has been asked before, but I did a search and wasn't able to find any relevant threads, so I thought I'd ask what people think--whether this sounds like good reasoning or not. Thanks!

 

[whopper]

You might not realize this but Ob-Gyn has a lot of applications with psychiatry. In NJ for example, it is mandatory to screen women who recently gave birth with an Edinburgh Depression Scale.

I'd get Ob-Gyn out of the way first, only because its a core requirement, and Neurology isn't, and because it'll help you get your Step II stuff out of the way earlier. As long as you get Neuro done before psyche residency, it'll help you out.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

Agree with whopper--neuro's important for psychiatry, but I think it is somewhat hard to do well in as a MS3 (at some venues), and students are really not usually taught or evaluated with psychiatry in mind, so I think that your frustrations would be likely to continue.

I'm all for getting OB "out of the way"! And it does have some relevance for psych--in August I had FIVE pregnancies on my inpatient service, two of which we "diagnosed" from the admission labs! 😱

 

[Lauraaa]

For my 4th year I'm taking neuro this January with the thought that one of the benefits of taking it in 2nd semester 4th year would be that it would be closer to the 2 months of neuro done in the intern year and hopefully the material would be more "fresh" in my mind than it would be if taken in the 3rd year.

Plus - and you've might have already heard this or found this to be true for yourself - many students end up doing much better at or liking some rotations much better than they would have imagined before they took them, and vice versa. So you could end up doing very well in ob/gyn. It's difficult to know before hand too as sometime a good portion of the grade also depends on site of rotation, who you work with, and luck, etc.

 

[nancysinatra]

Ok, I'm going to follow this advice and get Ob/Gyn out of the way. Thanks for helping me out here! It's so true that I've ended up really liking many things in medicine I was initially wary of, so while I don't expect to love Ob/Gyn, hopefully it will be interesting at least.

Neuro is required at my school--is this not the case everywhere?

 

[billypilgrim37]

Neuro is required at my school--is this not the case everywhere?

It's just another required 3rd year rotation for us. But we don't get 3rd year electives, so...