Mandatory rotations away from home university

[Guest windymountain2003]

Hi,

 

Has anyone done a mandatory clerkship rotation- say Psych, for example, away from their home institution? If so, was it difficult or more rewarding? What was your experience? I am considering doing this for family reasons, but am wondering if I am risking failing my schools' end of rotation exam if I take it in another location.

 

Any advice/comments would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

WM

[Guest UWOMED2005]

Western's curriculum is pretty decentralized. We have to do 4 weeks of our rotations at a rural center (though rural could mean a small town 30 min out of London, meaning people commute) and with the Windsor program, tons of people did rotations there as well.

 

I don't think a single person who did their rotation outside of London failed their end of rotation exams. Certainly not because they did their rotation outside of London. In fact, I'm sure in some cases the people did better.

[Guest summervirus]

While not exactly what you're referring to, I did part of my core internal medicine rotation in a community hospital away from Edmonton. (I'm studying at the UofA). Our medicine block in third year is 12-weeks long and I spent 3 of those 12 in St. Albert, around a 45-minute-distance drive for me. It was both good and bad.

 

I found that this particular community hospital wasn't really comfortable or familiar with students. I felt pretty abandoned at first. (It was difficult to go from the University Hospital where I had four residents, another med student, and a staff attending on my team to having no one).

 

That being said, I think I quickly got used to it and I don't think I suffered because of it. I'm not sure how other students learn their knowledge and skills, but for myself, I'm a fairly independent learner so I just read my textbooks and practised skills on the patients I had under my care. It wouldn't have mattered if I was at the university or out of town. In the end, I think I acquired a similar experience as the other students who had stayed in town and I didn't have any more difficulty than my classmates with the rotation exam.

[Guest endingsoon]

While not exactly what you're referring to, I did part of my core internal medicine rotation in a community hospital away from Edmonton.

 

See I can see the positive and negative of this depending on what you want to do. I too did part of my Paeds in a community hospital, but I knew that I did not want to ever apply to paeds. If, on the other hand, you had some desire to perhaps apply to IM (or Paeds in my case) then it probably makes more sense to do the core rotation in a teaching hospital so that you can make contacts and get good letters.

 

I got 3 of my letters from my core rotations in IM and had I gone to the community for that I am pretty sure that I would not have had enough letters for a strong application.

 

So my advice would be that if you want to perhaps apply to something, try and do the rotation in a teachind centre (either at your own school or elsewhere). If you are not planning on doing that speciality, then a community experience might be nice to learn the ropes and get some hands on experience without a ton of other residents around.

[Guest Ian Wong]

Floating back to the top...

 

Ian