Anyone do neurosurg or GI as their elective?

[ELKPA]

I have to submit my elective rotation decision soon and So far I'm really interested in GI and the potential of neurosurg. My program has excellent preceptors for both so I was hoping to get some feedback on either in terms of what you loved about them, what was not so great, etc. if your already a PA in either of these fields, I'd also love to hear what you have to say!

 

Thanks!

[rev ronin]

Those are both subspecialties, so will you have had a surgical and/or IM rotation first?  If not, I suspect you will be getting less specialty info than you would if you had done the proximate general rotation first.

[Timon]

I did GI as part of 1 of 2  IM rotations. My other IM was emphasized on geriatrics / SNFs. I found my GI rotation to be very helpful in current practice and also throughout my rotations. We did scopes 5 days a week with rounding in the mornings and then clinic in the afternoon. Got to learn alot about GI bleeds and how to manage them. What you learn in practice will conflict with the PAEA exams btw as your view will be from a GI prospective versus PAEA will have it from a family practice perspective. The work ups also helped me a lot. Got pimped a lot in that rotation learning about diseases like rendu osler webber (had 2 cases), watermelon stomach AKA (Gastric Antral Vascular Ectasia), and a bunch of other causes for GI bleeds.Learned alot about hepatitis and the 6 various types of Hep C and the areas where they are endemic too as well as their treatments.

 

Also got to learn about ERCP and HIDA scans being in the room watching them first hand being performed. Also got to learn a lot about EGD and Colonoscopy complications in addition to learning the A&P of these respective systems. Also got to do a lot of work with G-Tubs and PEG / PEJ with cancer patients as well as other conditions like guillain barre. I think its a great specialty to learn regardless of what specialty you choose to practice in. 

 

I didn't do any neuro rotations, but I would suggest infectious disease, cardio/pulm or neph rotations for IM or at least a ICU type rotation if you're looking for sub-specialty rotations. 

[ELKPA]

Thanks for the response and feedback! Sounds like you had a great experience in your GI rotation. To answer some of your questions, my program has an outpatient IM, inpatient IM as well as surgery rotations. Unfortunately there's no way to know the order of these, and some people actually have their elective as their first rotation. This, as you know, just has to do with clinic sites and their availability.

[Lauren R]

I loved my neurosurgery rotation.  A lot of what I loved or didn't love about the rotations were very specific to the site, though.  At my neurosurgery rotation, there were really great doctors.  There were three teams- one that rounded on post op patients, one that did outpatient work and one that actually did the surgeries.  I got to take turns in all of these roles.  The clinic was pretty cool, I learned how to read imaging.  The post op patients were awesome too.  As for the operating room, I enjoyed spinal surgery more than brain surgery.  The spine was a much faster surgery and I got to be first assist because it was less risky.  The majority of the work was done with the naked eye.  Brain surgery was performed under the microscope very slowly.  I mostly just watched these surgeries.  I can't shed any light on a GI rotation.

[Lauren R]

Actually I never thought I'd be interested in surgery. I was kind of dreading the rotation, but I loved it so much I almost went into neurosurgery out of school.  I ended up deciding not to specialize right away though.