5.4) What are "rotations"?
Description
This article is from the Medical Education FAQ, by eric@wilkinson.com (Eric P. Wilkinson, M.D.)with numerous contributions by others.
5.4) What are "rotations"?
Rotations are the blocks of time you spend on the different services
in the hospital. Most schools have a set of required rotations and
let you choose from a vast field of elective rotations to fill out
the rest of your third and/or fourth year. The required rotations
everywhere:
Surgery
Internal Medicine
Psychiatry
Pediatrics
Obstetrics and Gynecology (Ob/Gyn)
Generally you will spend a total of about 10 months doing these five
rotations. Some schools make you take all required rotations in the
third year, and some let you spread them out so that you can take
electives in the third year, thereby allowing you to take some
electives that may help you narrow down your possible choice of
specialty for residency.
There are some rotations that are required at all but a few schools:
Family medicine
Neurology
Orthopedics
A typical third year might look something like this:
Surgery - 2 months
Pediatrics - 2 months
Neurology - 1 month
Family Medicine - 1 month
Ob/Gyn - 6 weeks
Psychiatry - 6 weeks
Internal Medicine - 3 months
As far as electives go, generally there are several ways you can go.
You can take "away" rotations - rotations arranged to spend at other
hospitals (ideally the hospitals where you think you might like to
do your residency). Generally, schools will let you do a month or
two away. When considering away rotations, keep the following
tidbits in mind:
1) Most residency applications are due by October or November, and
most residency committees start making decisions on who to interview
by the end of November at the very latest. Therefore, for an away
rotation to really help you sway the people at the hospital you
visit, it must be done in the first few months of the fourth year
(keeping in mind that USMLE Step II is usually at the end of August
of that year). September and to a lesser extent October tend to be
the most popular months to schedule away rotations.
2) At most schools, there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get
an away rotation approved. You have to determine that the hospital
you want to go to actually has an open slot in the rotation you want
during the month you want to be there. Once you've gotten that
info, there are lots of forms and signatures needed--deans and
chairmen from both schools, grading papers, course content papers,
etc. The point of all this is: once you decide to take an away
rotation, get started on planning it because it takes a month or two
to get everything straightened out.
The electives you do at your home school tend to fall in these
categories:
1) Electives in what you think will be your residency specialty
2) Electives in things you think will help you in residency (a lot of
people take things like cardiology, radiology or emergency medicine
because they provide valuable training for the intern year)
3) Electives in things that interest you
4) Electives your friends are taking
5) Electives that are easy (generally includes things like
ophthalmology, dermatology, and lots of odd little electives that
will turn up on the list at your school; at my school we could do a
month sitting in the blood bank drawing blood from people, or do a
month learning what the different lab tests are and what they mean)
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