4th year rotations

In typical medschool fashion the schedule and list of things to do continues to move full speed ahead. Nick is currently 1 1/2 rotations into his 3rd year (aka about a little under halfway through with his 3rd year) and already it is time to submit his choices for 4th year rotation electives. Crazy!

There are a couple mandatory rotations each student must take but for the most part students have a lot more freedom to "choose" their 4th year rotations.  However, there are only a limited number of slots available per rotation (with SGU students being offered the fewest number of spots compared to other schools in the area) so as per the usual- it's competitive and a bit stressful trying to lock down the electives that will best help him be successful later with matching a Residency.

Basically right now Nick needs to pick his first part of 4th year rotations now and then will place the second part of the year very early in January. It's more or less first come first serve, so there is no guarentee they get each elective they want, but the hope is they will get as many as possible.

Residency applications/interviews begin fairly early into 4th year so the biggest scramble is trying to get the most imporant ones done in the first 2 rotations or so of 4th year so they can be part of his Residency application packet. No pressure or stress right? Wouldn't be medschool (esp as an SGU student) if they didn't make you fight tooth and nail for every inch!

Nick's ideal schedule that he is requesting is more or less this:

• EM at St John's (September)
• EM at Genysis (October)
• Medicine sub at St. John's (November)
• Cardiology at St. John's (December)
• Infectious Disease at St. John's (January)
• Pediatric Cardiology at St. John's (February)
• Critical care at St. John's (March)
• Trauma Surgery at St. John's (April)

Fingers crossed his final schedule looks SOMETHING like this (esp on the EM rotation front) but stay tuned to hear how all this ends up turning out ;)