Thread: Rotation Locations

How difficult is it to secure your first choice locations for 3rd and 4th year rotations? Is there a lottery you enter into?

I have my heart set on coming back to Michigan for rotations, specifically at St. John's near Detroit and Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI.

Originally Posted by Franz Pop

How difficult is it to secure your first choice locations for 3rd and 4th year rotations? Is there a lottery you enter into?

I have my heart set on coming back to Michigan for rotations, specifically at St. John's near Detroit and Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI.

St. John's isn't on our list for rotations for 3rd year.
If your heart is set on Michigan, then i'm afrraid it will be broken, since we have only one place in michigan and even then you can't do your whole 3rd year there. May change, but if you come here, expect to be in NJ or NY for at least 3rd year- the others are few and hard to get.

Why are they difficult to get if St. George's is affiliated with Providence, St. John's, St. Joseph's and North Oakland Hospitals? How difficult is it secure rotation at major teaching hospitals not affiliated with St. George's?

Which of the affiliated hospitals are offered varies each term. For example, this past term only one MI hospital with 4 spots was offered.

AFAIK, you need to do most, if not all, of your clinicals at an affiliated hospital, but this can vary depending on which state you want to get licensed in. For example, NY will let you do up to 12 weeks at an unaffiliated hospital.

I suggest you contact the ClinEd people in Bayshore, as they would be able to answer your questions more accurately and fully.

Originally Posted by Franz Pop

Why are they difficult to get if St. George's is affiliated with Providence, St. John's, St. Joseph's and North Oakland Hospitals? How difficult is it secure rotation at major teaching hospitals not affiliated with St. George's?

actually sgu is no longer affliated with providence as of this year (why I can't say). Some affliations are for 4th year electives only so you can't do 3rd year cores there. The number of spots are very limited (~2-10 spots at best)
Actually very difficult - many school will not take foreign students into their 4th year electives as visiting students- been checking and they are fair and far between. I suggest if there is a particular school you want to do electives at - check out their website to see the criteria for visiting students (for example NONE of the schools in Va accept foreign students for 4th year).
also check the state med board of the states you are thinking bout practicing in- like emt said, some do require ALL rotations to be done at affliated hospitals. also check if the rotation is osteo or allo- could make a difference as well.

Originally Posted by Franz Pop

Why are they difficult to get if St. George's is affiliated with Providence, St. John's, St. Joseph's and North Oakland Hospitals? How difficult is it secure rotation at major teaching hospitals not affiliated with St. George's?

SGU is still affiliated with St. John, St. Joseph, and North Oakland. BUT you can only be assigned to St. Joseph, where you can only do Medicine and Surgery cores. I was lucky enough to be assigned there and i'll be doing family practice at North Oakland and a peds elective at St. John. You can do peds core at St. John and OB/GYN at North Oakland, however neither of those are definite as those hospitals have to juggle between students at other schools as well and have a limited # of spots, and availability may not be to your likeing.

SGU picks hospitals which are large enough to have residency programs but aren't big centers where tons of US med students do their rotations. Losing Providence was a tough blow and you can read more about why that was in my earlier posts.

When it comes to 4th year electives, sometimes even though a hospital/university may say that they dont accept non-LCME med students to do rotations there, it may just depend on who you know (sorry, much of medicine is political and revolves around connections). I want to give you a personal example, but i'm pretty supersitious and don't want to "count my chickens before they hatch." What the school doesn't tell you is that setting up unaffiliated elective is a real pain in the neck and you might find is not worth the fuss. Ask me in november and i'll be able to tell you if it wa worth it for me.

If you have your heart set on coming back to MI for rotations, you might want to go to AUC, as they have many more spots in MI than SGU (and they still have Providence). Sure i wanted to go back to MI too, and i was lucky enough to do that, but i was open to the idea of going to NJ (or taking a LOA and trying my luck with the next class).

Originally Posted by drnick07

SGU is still affiliated with St. John, St. Joseph, and North Oakland. BUT you can only be assigned to St. Joseph, where you can only do Medicine and Surgery cores. I was lucky enough to be assigned there and i'll be doing family practice at North Oakland and a peds elective at St. John. You can do peds core at St. John and OB/GYN at North Oakland, however neither of those are definite as those hospitals have to juggle between students at other schools as well and have a limited # of spots, and availability may not be to your likeing.

SGU picks hospitals which are large enough to have residency programs but aren't big centers where tons of US med students do their rotations. Losing Providence was a tough blow and you can read more about why that was in my earlier posts.

I was wondering, Dr. Nick, if all of the 4th year electives can be done at the hospitals in Michigan? Also, what do you mean when you say that the only hospital you are assigned to is St. Joseph? We can not be assigned to the other two? Then why are they still listed under affiliations on the website? Also, why is Providence still listed on the website as an available affiliated clinical site? This is so confusing.

prolly a "doh" question, but where can i get a list of the rotation locations? (any on the west coast?)

http://www.sgu.edu/website/sguwebsit...dHospitals.htm

I understand that rotation hospitals are classified as “clinical centers,” “major affiliated,” or “affiliated but why are they set up like that? Are some hospitals unprepared to teach all of the core rotations or just unwilling to offer them to SGU students? It just seems odd that there are seemingly full-service hospitals that will only offer one core rotation (i.e. Highland) to students.