Missionary Orthopod in the Making

So on Thursday night the deans of my medical school sat all the Junior down to talk about our Senior schedules. From all that they said, truly my 4th year of medical school will be the most flexible year yet and probably the most fun. I will kind of break it down for those who are wondering what 4th year is like. Basically there are 14 weeks of stuff that we are absolutely required to do, and then 20 weeks of stuff that we need to do something but they don’t tell us what, and then the rest of the 12 weeks are used for vacation! So the 16 weeks of required stuff includes:

Preventative and Community Medicine- 4 weeks
Emergency Medicine- 2 weeks
Intensive Care Medicine (MICU, SICU, or PICU): 2 weeks
Sub-Internship in either Family Medicine, Medicine, Pediatrics, or Surgery- 4 weeks
Neurology- 2 weeks

So starting this upcoming Monday an online calendar will open up that will all us Juniors to schedule exactly where we would like to put the required rotations. Then once the signing up process occurs then we are allowed to start applying for the 20 weeks of elective stuff which is really flexible. I can do an elective in “Film and Medicine” or I can do an away orthopedic rotation in Boston if I wanted to. I could also spend up to 8 weeks overseas on a mission elective! So over course, being the neurotic person that I am, I have already planned out my year, granted that I get my required rotations in the spot that I want it, everything else will hopefully fall into place. So here is my tentative schedule for my 4th year:

2 weeks (July 8-18)- Vacation/Studying for USMLE Step 2

2 weeks (July 19, 26)- Neurology Elective/Take USMLE Step 2

2 weeks (Aug 2,9)- Musculoskeletal Radiology: Hopefully I will learn how to read these images better in time for my ortho rotations

4 weeks (Aug 16, 23, 30, Sept. 6)- Ortho Elective at LLU: Very hard to get so I will probably camp outside of their door, lol

4 weeks (Sept. 13, 21, 27, Oct 4)- Ortho Away Elective at either Univ. of Maryland, Union Memorial, Georgetown, Howard, or GW

4 weeks (Oct 11, 18, 25, Nov. 1)- Ortho Away Elective at either Univ. of Maryland, Union Memorial, Georgetown, Howard, or GW

4 weeks (Nov 8, 15, 22, 29)- Preventative and Community Medicine

8 weeks (Dec. 6, 13, 20, 27, Jan 3, 10, 17, 24)- Vacation in the MD/DC area in addition to going on my Ortho interviews. Since 90% of the interviews for Ortho are during the months of Dec. and Jan. and since the majority of my interviews will be in in the MD/DC area it makes more sense for me to be on that coast rather than flying back and forth from CA to MD. So this will hopefully allow me to get some good rest and also save a good bit of money in plane tickets as I could probably drive to most of these interviews.

4 weeks (Jan. 31, Feb 7,14, 21)- Sub -Internship in hopefully Family Medicine because it will be more chill than doing it in General Surgery

2 weeks (Feb 28, March 7)- Anatomy Elective where I get to spend time in the cadaver lab dissecting and strengthening my knowledge of anatomy

2 weeks (March 14, 21)- Vacation/ MATCH DAY time!!!!

4 weeks (March 28,April 4,11,18)- Overseas Mission Elective to India or Africa

2 weeks (April 25, May 2)- Emergency Medicine

2 weeks (May 9, 16)- Surgery Intensive Care Unit

1 weeks (May 23)- Bonus weeks

Graduation- May 29, 2011

So as you can see that is quite the schedule and I look forward to being done with 3rd and entering the Oasis of 4th year. I probably still need to scour through it to make sure that I have my 14 required weeks and 20 elective weeks all in there but overall I think it is a solid schedule. Let’s see how it works out.