Saora1
09-20-2006, 08:35 AM
As I understand it, in the past terms students were allowed to ask doctors if they could come in for extra rotations and once the doctor agreed and signed their cards (to show they were present) it was all good. As such, many students were able to get their 22 rotations completed early.
I don't know what the requirements were for doing rotations were previously but let me explain the current setup in Fall '06.
We have to do 22 rotations over the term with one from at least one from each of 14 different specialties e.g. Anesthesiology, Radiology, ENT, Radiology, etc. After that, the other 8 can be made up by repeating whatever you want or is available. At least that is what we were told at the start of the term.
A couple weeks into the term it was changed and we were told the following:
1. Any extra rotations scheduled outside of the Clinical Skills office DO NOT count for credit.
2. All rotations are now scheduled for the term i.e we are assigned specific rotations 2x/week except for exam weeks when we don't have any.
Okay now that's fine and all but here's the part that is just absolutely frustrating. To me anyway.
We still have to complete 1 each of all the 14 different specialties but the school did not see fit to schedule some of those specialties into what they assigned the different groups. Now my particular group is "lucky" as we're only missing one specialty but I know of others who are missing 2 or 3 different ones yet are scheduled for things like Pediatrics multiple times. Going to the office to try and schedule these missing specialties is like banging your head against the wall. For the most part, they tell you come back later in the term and they'll see if anything is available in weeks 13 or 14. At least, that's been my experience and that of a few people I've spoken with. *sigh* Maybe others have had better luck depending on what they're missing e.g. there may be more availability for something "common" like surgery rather than ENT or Urology.
Also, in order to make up a particular rotation, you need to have that day free IN THE AFTERNOON. There are no options for the morning (cause you'll miss class and while that may be okay with the individual, it's not with the school) or the weekend. So, seeing as how we have hospital already 2x/week, Pharm group every week and ACS group every other week that leaves one free day every week and 2 free days every other week to make up missing rotations.
I am just tired of checking every day or two to see if something is available. I guess I wouldn't be as frustrated if this was the system that was always in place but they've changed it from the past terms and it's a giant step backwards in my opinion. I understand that maybe they did it to "simplify" things in that students no longer need to try and schedule rotations on their own and to maybe ensure that people got to see a variety of different specialties instead of, let's say, doing 6 surgeries and missing Obs/Gyn. But then they should have scheduled all 14 rotations for each group rather than now giving us the headache (and probably driving the secretary crazy with the constant requests) of trying to get it done whenever a slot magically becomes available on one of the few days we have free.
Sorry for my rant but I am just annoyed as hell with this whole thing after trying for the last couple weeks to get my missing rotation scheduled. Finally I was told I that there was a visiting Gastroenterologist that I could make up my missing rotation with (even though I'm missing Ophthalmology) but guess what - I am not free on those days.
SGU you drive me nuts sometimes!!
PS The rotations have been a mixed bag for me. Sometimes they are awesome (depends on the doc and what's going on that day) but sometimes totally useless. I've gotten tons of experience taking histories from real patients and, as tedious as it can be sometimes, it's a skill we all need to perfect. But while I know people who have been present for some awesome procedures my group has been pretty unlucky in some ways. For example, out of 2 Surgery and 2 Anesthesiology rotations completed so far where we expected to be in the operating room, we instead spent the afternoon taking pre-op patient histories because there was no operation scheduled. So that's just bad luck and can't be helped, but it's kind of disheartening when others tell you about the cool surgery they witnessed.
I don't know what the requirements were for doing rotations were previously but let me explain the current setup in Fall '06.
We have to do 22 rotations over the term with one from at least one from each of 14 different specialties e.g. Anesthesiology, Radiology, ENT, Radiology, etc. After that, the other 8 can be made up by repeating whatever you want or is available. At least that is what we were told at the start of the term.
A couple weeks into the term it was changed and we were told the following:
1. Any extra rotations scheduled outside of the Clinical Skills office DO NOT count for credit.
2. All rotations are now scheduled for the term i.e we are assigned specific rotations 2x/week except for exam weeks when we don't have any.
Okay now that's fine and all but here's the part that is just absolutely frustrating. To me anyway.
We still have to complete 1 each of all the 14 different specialties but the school did not see fit to schedule some of those specialties into what they assigned the different groups. Now my particular group is "lucky" as we're only missing one specialty but I know of others who are missing 2 or 3 different ones yet are scheduled for things like Pediatrics multiple times. Going to the office to try and schedule these missing specialties is like banging your head against the wall. For the most part, they tell you come back later in the term and they'll see if anything is available in weeks 13 or 14. At least, that's been my experience and that of a few people I've spoken with. *sigh* Maybe others have had better luck depending on what they're missing e.g. there may be more availability for something "common" like surgery rather than ENT or Urology.
Also, in order to make up a particular rotation, you need to have that day free IN THE AFTERNOON. There are no options for the morning (cause you'll miss class and while that may be okay with the individual, it's not with the school) or the weekend. So, seeing as how we have hospital already 2x/week, Pharm group every week and ACS group every other week that leaves one free day every week and 2 free days every other week to make up missing rotations.
I am just tired of checking every day or two to see if something is available. I guess I wouldn't be as frustrated if this was the system that was always in place but they've changed it from the past terms and it's a giant step backwards in my opinion. I understand that maybe they did it to "simplify" things in that students no longer need to try and schedule rotations on their own and to maybe ensure that people got to see a variety of different specialties instead of, let's say, doing 6 surgeries and missing Obs/Gyn. But then they should have scheduled all 14 rotations for each group rather than now giving us the headache (and probably driving the secretary crazy with the constant requests) of trying to get it done whenever a slot magically becomes available on one of the few days we have free.
Sorry for my rant but I am just annoyed as hell with this whole thing after trying for the last couple weeks to get my missing rotation scheduled. Finally I was told I that there was a visiting Gastroenterologist that I could make up my missing rotation with (even though I'm missing Ophthalmology) but guess what - I am not free on those days.
SGU you drive me nuts sometimes!!
PS The rotations have been a mixed bag for me. Sometimes they are awesome (depends on the doc and what's going on that day) but sometimes totally useless. I've gotten tons of experience taking histories from real patients and, as tedious as it can be sometimes, it's a skill we all need to perfect. But while I know people who have been present for some awesome procedures my group has been pretty unlucky in some ways. For example, out of 2 Surgery and 2 Anesthesiology rotations completed so far where we expected to be in the operating room, we instead spent the afternoon taking pre-op patient histories because there was no operation scheduled. So that's just bad luck and can't be helped, but it's kind of disheartening when others tell you about the cool surgery they witnessed.