So I am doing my first orthopaedic away rotation at Atlanta Medical Center in…yeah you guessed it, Atlanta, GA. I chose this place in order to 1) see what community orthopaedic program was like 2) open up the southern programs to my application 3) apply to a program that hopefully isn’t as terribly hard to match at as Hopkins 4) get a lot of hands on experience since they operate a ton there 5) rotate at a place that is in a city I would (and my wife of course) consider living in besides Loma Linda and Maryland. This is actually the first away rotation that I will do after I do my orthopaedic rotation here at LLU. One of the chief residents at the program just sent out this email, telling all the rotators what the rotation will be like:
Hello everyone. i am XXXX XXXX, one of the chief residents at AMC this year. i know you are all going to be here at different times this year, but i wanted to send out an email in advance to prepare and welcome you. i understand that the number of places you can rotate is limited and we are glad that you’ve chosen to spend one of your months at Atlanta Medical Center. We look forward to having you.
On your first day, you will meet with XXXXX (our program coordinator). Both her, and myself will orient you at AMC. we’ll be in touch about where to go and what time.
During your 4 weeks you will spend 1/2 of it at AMC (our main hospital), where we spend the largest amount of our time. The remaining 2 weeks will be spent on our subspecialty rotations. Below is a sample schedule:
Weeks 1 & 2 – at AMC, rotating on both the trauma and general ortho services. We ask the students to help out the PGY-2s round in the morning. We have morning conferences starting @ 6:15 (30 minutes of reading/education, 45 minutes of x-ray rounds), so the 2’s round before conference. The OR starts at 7:30.
Week 3 – on the Sports service. You’ll split the week working both with Drs. Kane and Gillogly. Dr. Kane is our chair and program director. Dr. Gillogly is the head orthopaedist for the Falcons & the Thrashers, so you’ll get a good variety of experiences working with both.
Week 4 – on pediatrics and hand service. You’ll spend time at Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital (a top 5 children’s hospital in the country) where our program was actually founded and the hand group. Childrens Orthopaedics of Atlanta is a busy group of 7 pediatric orthopaedists. The Hand and Upper Extremity Center of GA is one of the finest hand groups in the state, and the only atlanta group that treats pediatric hand.
in addition, if you have a specific interest, we can have you spend a day on some of our other rotations (Foot and Ankle, Tumor, Joints) if time allows. we can take about this on a case by case basis once you are here.
We have lectures on Tuesday evenings from 6 – 8 PM and Friday afternoon from 2-5 PM. All students are expected to attend the lectures. Additionally, you will be expected to prepare a short (5-10 minute) talk on the topic of your choosing at the end of the rotation.
Call: we’ll have you take 3-4 nights in your 2 weeks at AMC. you’ll get to do stuff on call that your probably won’t do during the day, and it is a good experience. you should take a night of call on peds. there is no call on sports, and hand is home call, so you are off the hook there. weekends are at your discretion. you are not expected to take call, or round, or operate (if there are cases), but you can do any or all of those things if you want to.
Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions about your rotation. My cell number is XXX-XXXX. Thanks and see you soon.
So I am definitely excited to actually be close to doing an away rotation. As you can see, when I am on the trauma service, conference starts at 6:15 a.m. and I need to round on the patients before that, so that means I will probably be at the hospital by 4:45a.m. to 5:00 a.m. each morning, which is about what I expected. Weekend call is optional, but of course i am going to take as many weekend calls as I can. Its only 2 weeks of it, and I will learn a lot. So yeah, I am super excited to get this process going!
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