What Kind Of Ecs Should You Do In M1?

[Guest]

What kind of ECs should you do in M1?

[ralk]

What kind of ECs should you do in M1?

 

Whatever you want, including nothing. M1, in 4-year programs at least, I think is best thought of as an opportunity to explore your options. Do observerships, attend talks, volunteer for something interesting, whatever catches your interest. Nothing is essential at this stage. If you're thinking perhaps of a competitive specialty, maybe consider looking into research opportunities in those or related fields, but it's completely fine to just explore fields to narrow down what you might like. Even in fields that are more competitive, where research could help, it can wait until later.

[shikimate]

try a few observerships, see what work setting (ER, inpatient, outpatient, community, other etc) attract your liking.

[bearded frog]

Try to do a half-day in everything. Seriously. As we went through pre-clerkship we had the option of doing half day mini-electives relevant to the current content we were studying and it helped give context to the learning. Even do time in things you are 100% sure you won't want to do for residency, as it helps you consider what you do want to do relative to that.

 

If nothing else do a day in the OR, a day in IM, and a day in FM, although FM is usually mandatory in M1. That will help guide your expectations and thoughts about choosing a specialty.

[FailureToThrive]

On 2017-05-19 at 3:03 PM, bearded frog said:

Try to do a half-day in everything. Seriously. As we went through pre-clerkship we had the option of doing half day mini-electives relevant to the current content we were studying and it helped give context to the learning. Even do time in things you are 100% sure you won't want to do for residency, as it helps you consider what you do want to do relative to that.

 

If nothing else do a day in the OR, a day in IM, and a day in FM, although FM is usually mandatory in M1. That will help guide your expectations and thoughts about choosing a specialty.

Are half days just shadowing a dr in the field for half a day?

did you just cold email doctors?  

[bearded frog]

We had a formal system where you could do "horizontal" electives which were basically shadowing and you could either just approach a doc or email the undergrad coordinator for that department and they would try and set one up. We automatically had half days in each subspeicality as we did the appropriate content that we just had to sign up for. (IE we just signed up in a google doc to spend a morning with a gastroenterologist during our GI unit.)