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