Timing Is Everything - Procrastination Will Hurt You

For those of you who procrastinate in getting your clinical rotations set up, don't procrastinate. Especially don't procrastinate in July, August or September. If you procrastinate in August, you can pretty much kiss housing good bye. I should have written this entry in January, but better late than never.

Now, I know that some of you are saying, "But, my only just accepted me to this rotation". I understand that this happens, but for the most part, if you get applications in early, you get accepted early and you have very little to worry about.

IF you did procrastinate on the road to your clinicals in July, August and September, guess what? You're in HEAVY competition for housing. You are competing with returning graduate and undergraduate student housing in most major cities. In August, the worst month of the three, you are also dealing with short-term accommodation shortages due to final summer vacations.

The housing I run historically does the following in each of the aforementioned months:

July is FULLY BOOKED by June 15-20
August is FULLY BOOKED by July 1
September is FULLY BOOKED by July 20

If you need something last minute, you're going to pay between $1500-2500/mo for housing. So get started early and good luck!

Away Rotations - Do I Bring my Car or Not?

Should I bring my car with me for my Clinical Rotation? I get this question a lot, so I thought I would pontificate on it a bit. It depends. There are a number of factors to consider in bringing your car:

1) Are you going to be living in a GREAT part (i.e. Lincoln Park) of a LARGE city (i.e. Chicago)? If so, forget the car unless you are willing to pay $250-400/mo just to have a parking place. Even more in New York. That, or you will drive for an hour each day finding an available free spot. You'll also spend a lot of time avoiding permit parking areas.
2) Is your hospital accessible by walking or public transit. See if the transit system has a Trip Planner like the ChicagoCTA or the New York MTA does. If so, scrap the car.
3) Also, even if your hospital is reachable by public transit, which is more time effective: Driving or Public Transit. One popular rotation in Chicago is at Jackson Park Hospital. While reachable by transit, it may take upwards of 75 minutes to get there. By car it takes 25 minutes. Bring the car.
4) Next, take into account the area that you will be living in addition to where you will be working. Typically, it is easy enough to find a safe place to live, but get some background on the area that the hospital is in.
5) While there are other factors, like: gas prices in the area, whether you know how to parallel park or not, etc, what I've shared above should get you started.

Finally, if you do decide to bring a car, you MUST follow these rules in major cities:
1) DO NOT leave ANYTHING out in your car. No CD's, Radar Detectors, GPS Devices, IPODS, etc. ALSO, DO NOT leave the MOUNTING BRACKETS for these devices visible. Put them away. A mounting bracket for an IPOD or GPS can be enough to make it worth while for someone to break in.
2) Park in a well lit and well populated area. Do not park on streets that are industrial or commercial in nature that are closed at night. There will be no one around to hear your car glass breaking. Also, do not park underneath elevated transit systems. Thieves are very good at waiting for a train to come by to break the glass so no one can hear it.

Good luck.

Electives at Public Institutions - Limited Housing Help

I just had an experience today that I thought I would share with those of you hunting for a Clinical Rotation. Public institutions are not allowed to promote a certain housing service over another for the medical students that are rotating. Some coordinators misunderstand the rules and actually won't even supply a list of options as they feel they are promoting something.

I tried adding MedBed to a list at a hospital in Brooklyn today (a NYC run hospital that will remain nameless for the time being), and they replied that they cannot hand out housing information. Meanwhile, a sister hospital of theirs (also to remain nameless), was glad to take the information, but stated that they could not recommend one over the other. Fine, that is fair enough.

Although few and far between, these institutions can make it more difficult for you to find housing than institutions that do provide some assistance. So, ask the question when you are applying to the rotation, "What housing resources do you have?" If they tell you that you are on your own, you may want to find a rotation that is a little more helpful. Most stock a decent (not great, but decent) list of resources for you to find the appropriate housing.

Accomodations During Your Away Electives

This topic is near and dear to my heart as this is what I do all day long: assist medical students in finding housing for their clinical electives. You will need to be a little creative when hunting for housing. Here are the main factors in finding housing:

1) Length of stay. Try getting several rotations back-to-back in the same city.
-4 Week leases are tough to find
-4 Month leases are still tough, but easier than 4 Week
-6 Month leases are more readily available still
-12 Month leases are a dime a dozen (if you can stay in a city that long)
2) Furnishings. It is a simple position of supply and demand.
-Furnished housing is a little tougher to find (or at least more expensive)
-Unfurnished housing is readily available (but then what do you do for furniture)
3) Inclusivity (I made this word up)
-An apartment with all utilities, wireless internet, cable, etc. included are hard to find
-An apartment where you set up the utilities, internet, cable, etc. are all over the place
4) Privacy of apartment (Studio/1-Bed Vs. 2,3,4+ Bed)
-While both types of apartments are readily available, Studio/1-Bed will cost more
-2, 3 & 4 bed apartments that are shared will get you an economy of scale and save money

So, here we've put together all of the factors. Give these some thought when you are planning rotations. Cities where planning back to back to back clinical electives should be fairly easy are:
Chicago Clinical Rotations, New York City Clinical Rotations, Atlanta Clinical Rotations, Houston Clinical Rotations, Baltimore Clinical Rotations and Philadelphia Clinical Rotations. While there are other cities, these are the big ones where you will find rotation upon rotation to keep you in the city for a long period of time.

About Ryan McIntyre: Ryan McIntyre runs MedBed, Inc. which provides short-term, all-inclusive, furnished housing for medical students doing elective rotations. Information about his company can be found at: MedBed Short Term Housing

The Clerkship Hunt - Do Electives in a City You Think You'll Like

You've got to fulfill basic requirements for your core and elective clinical rotations, so you might as well take the opportunity to do them in a city that you think you will enjoy. You should do some upfront research (especially if you've never been to the city). See if you can find a city that matches your personality. If you are really brave, make it a city that you've never been to before, but think you might really enjoy.

It's just one of those things: if you surround yourself with something that you like, you're more likely to be successful doing it.

Highlight on Stroger Hospital of Cook County Emergency Medicine

Probably one of the busiest clinical rotations that we get in Chicago is the rotation at the Stroger Hospital of Cook County Emergency Room (followed closely by Trauma). It also happens to be one of the most difficult electives to find information on and get signed up for. They are busy over there.

On the flip side, you will find very few clinical coordinators as nice as Ms. Ethel Lee who takes care of all of the Emergency Medicine Residents and Medical Students. The ER elective rotation at Cook County is one of the toughest, but also one of the ones that I find students the most excited about. You can find links to the Cook County App/Info pages at: Chicago Clinical Rotations.

Some of the comments/stories from Cook County Rotating Students are as follows (consider this a highlight reel of actual quotes from tenants who I will keep anonymous):

-"I would never have seen anything like this in Australia. This guy came into the ER with 6-7 self-inflicted stab wounds, crucifixes perfectly cut across his nipples and told us he had tried to perform a self-exorcism. We immediately ran tests for multiple-personalities, as if we needed to test for it."
-"I have never seen such a high number of TB, HIV and cocaine induced heart complications as I have seen here in Chicago. We don't see this in London."
-"If anyone asks whether it is a good idea to do 'Trauma & Emergency Medicine' clinicals back to back, it's not. Great experience, but I don't know if my body can handle this any longer."
-When asked about the rotation: "I'm tired. I loved it, but I'm tired." Get used to this one. It's a rigorous externship with a lot of hours.

I love hearing the Cook County stories...I'll probably end up posting more before to long. Enjoy!

Clinical Rotation - Share Your Knowledge

Just a quick weekend post on making it easier to find the clinical rotation you want. Share. The harder you had to work to find a rotation for yourself, the more you should share your findings.

Try it as an experiment. Share the information that you find and watch how everything comes back to you 10 fold.

As always, you can share the links to your findings at: Clinical Rotation Finder

Electives - Working with Hospital Coordinators

How many times have you tried to find a clinical rotation, had to deal with the clinical coordinator at the hospital OR your school and they've been unpleasant to deal with. In fact, you maybe lost a little of your politeness while working through your rotations.

Look, I know rotations scheduling can be stressful. I see medical students getting stressed out over it everyday. Today, I decided to do a little SALES for clinical coordinators. We'll call it Coordinator Sales 101. Whether you think you're in sales or not, you have to do it, so here we go.

I see a lot of medical students that see the clinical coordinator as the obstacle standing between them and the elective they are trying to get into. I want you to adjust your thinking a bit and see the clinical coordinator as your bridge to the elective you are trying to get. Don't focus on the rotation, focus on the bridge; focus on the clinical coordinator.

Clinical coordinators have a lot on their plate. Try this: Ask them what they're doing this weekend. Get personal. If you focus on them, they will get you where you need to go.

STOP focusing on what it is that you want. This sounds counter-intuitive, but the more you focus on the interests, needs and passions of the person you are dealing with, the easier it is for them to go out of their way to get things done for you. You will get better electives and better service by talking about things like their kids and personal life. Guess how many times during the day they get to talk about the stuff that is really important to them? Hardly ever. They're usually working with stuff that is only important to you.

So, flip the table and give this a try the next time you have to schedule an elective. Take the opportunity to take an "off-ramp" with the coordinator. Get personal and you'll be surprised what they can pull off for you. You might just get every rotation you ever wanted in every city you ever wanted. Good luck.

Finding Electives - Case Study SUNY Downstate Brooklyn

I've found that many people give up when they can't find what they are looking for online. A great example is when I was looking for the clinical rotation information for SUNY Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. Their information and application was buried so deep on their Registrar's site that I would have never found it.

I proceeded to submit a general email inquiring where I could find information on electives for visiting students and was directed to a non-functioning URL. It was obvious from the URL that the information should have been in the Registrar's site. I eventually found all of the information I was looking for by digging through the site.

As always, this information was immediately posted to my Clinical Rotation Finder application. The AAMC website does have SUNY Downstate on its list to help you find clinical electives as a visiting student, however, only has the contact person and not the related URLs.

Clinical Rotation - AAMC Website for LCME Accredited Schools

All right, so we get rolling with this whole clinical rotation finding and discovering business. The first and most comprehensive tool I've found for LCME institutions is the AAMC website which I will post here:

http://services.aamc.org/eec/students/

This is an absolutely comprehsive guide to clinical rotations at Accredited US Medical Schools. The BIG downside is that most of these schools DO NOT take foreign visiting students. Those of you that are attending medical schools in the Caribbean, Europe and Central/South America have a little extra hoof-work to do (and I know, your schools don't help you as much as you wished they would).

I'll get to some of the "tricks" for you Non-LCME folks coming up. The largest piece of advice I can give you now is that you will have to be persistent in getting your elective rotations. If you give in and give up, the system will beat you. Hang in there, it's not as hard as it seems.

Clinical Rotation - Finding One in a Crunch

I must first start by saying that I am not a medical student, I just work with them all day long. My name is Ryan McIntyre and I am the original Scrub Shuffler for MedBed, Inc. I've been helping medical students find short term housing for their away elective rotations, clinical rotations or clinical electives...whatever you want to call them on any given day.

These days I find myself coming up with ways to assist medical students in finding clinical rotations when a hospital or school has suddenly pulled a 180 and simply says, "Sorry, we said we could take you, but now we can't".

I've spent the past few months beginning an application called Clinical Rotation Finder on our website. This blog will simply share some of the secrets that I've found in finding these elusive clinical rotations. As our application grows, these "secrets" won't be necessary as we'll have a complete map to all clinical rotations in the US. At least that is the plan. However, for the time being, I'll share what I know.