Clinical rotation electives- can't decide!

[garrettsim12]

I am a PA-S II and about 3 months away from beginning my clinical rotations and Im having trouble choosing which electives I want to do. I am pretty sure I want to work in some type of surgery/procedure based environment so I'm thinking about Orho, CT, and Neuro surgery but can't really decide which I would like most. I have also had some interest in interventional radiology.

 

 

I am mainly wondering how your time was during any of these rotations? Did you get a lot of exposure to things? We're you able to get a lot of OR time and learn a lot at at the same time? Which one did you find most interesting and helpful in the long run?

This also applies too anyone currently working in any of these fields.

 

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks!

 

 

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[UGoLong]

There is a lot to decide picking rotations. And it's complicated by the fact that no two preceptors/situations are the same, even in the same discipline. In your case, it sounds like you aren't sure which area of surgery you'd like to go into, but you don't plan on going into an internal medicine or primary care setting.

 

I'm not in surgery, but in your case I'd recommend doing at least one of the following:

- Talk to the students the year ahead of you and find out what surgical sites they liked and why. Your clinical coordinator can also help with this

 

- Pick a rotation with as much exposure as possible with what you want to do without regard to the specific discipline. For example, one that give you lots of OR time, if that's what you want. You won't be there long enough to become an expert at a technical skill, but it will help you know your way around the OR and exposure to various techniques. As an aside, one of my students wants surgical oncology using the DaVinci robot. Even knows where he'd like to work. I recommended that he get a second rotation using the robot in some other field, like urology.

 

There is no one right way to do this. Don't agonize too much!

 

Good luck!