Choosing an elective clinical rotation

[FuturePA0101]

I wanted to get some opinions on the subject of clinical rotations. I have the option of choosing a clinical rotation during second year.

Would you choose a clinical rotation in a specialty where you have never had a rotation in, or would you choose one that builds on previous rotations? I.e. would you do Dermatology, or Internal Medicine III.

[funinthesun]

It depends on what you want. If you love ortho then do ortho. If you love EM then do EM. the more experience in the field you want the better. If you feel like you want more practice with FM or IM then do another one to strengthen your skills. If you have interest in a specialty and don't know if you want to go in it or not then try it out. 

For instance, I always thought I wanted to do in anything surgery related.  I did a rotation in plastic surgery to improve my suturing skills and I was able to rule out plastics as a future career but the experience was amazing. Regardless, I'm sure you will learn something new! 

[EMEDPA]

if you know what field you want to pursue after school do one in that or something closely related. For EM I did peds em, trauma surgery, and em. (Peds em for peds, trauma surgery for surgery, extra em instead of extra fp). 

[SlowlyButSurely]

If you had all outpatient rotations, I would recommend an inpatient one. I did ICU and it was an incredible experience. It was my only inpatient setting, and there's a huge different between inpatient vs outpatient. Unless you absolutely have no interest in inpatient ever, or have had one already, it's a good rotation to have under your belt.

[Colorado]

I would recommend choosing something that hits one of these points:

-A specialty that you may be interested in, but were not exposed to in your core clinical rotations. (ie: Nephrology, Dermatology, etc. I chose Cardiac ICU which I LOVED and helped me feel more confident handling sick, complicated patients)

-Build more upon a field that you are definitely interested in. (ie: If you loved the ER and know its for you, then consider a Peds ER rotation, an Ultrasound ER rotation, repeat ER rotation at a different ER (think Rural v. inner city v. volume v. patient population differences), repeat ER at the same as your core (I did gen surgery and Ortho/trauma surgery at the same hospital and since they already knew me, I had the opportunity to have a lot more trust of my teachers and was able to do a lot more procedures because of it), or even trauma service because you may have more opportunities to do advanced procedures. There is benefit to working on different but similiar services at the same site. If you did trauma service at the same ER that you did your core ER rotation, you will already know how the operation works, whose who in the game, what the general roles of everyone are, not to mention you'll know your way around the hospital, and often its easier for PA Program clinical directors to set up rotations with elective specialties at sites they already have another student agreement with.)

-Rotate in an area that you feel weak in or have not had much exposure in (For me, it was ortho. So I chose Ortho/Trauma Surgery as an elective)

[MT2PA]

My program gave three thought processes:

1.  As above - something you're interested in or to strengthen a field you like

2. Something you may NEVER work in just to get the experience (i.e I would NEVER consider a surgical field but maybe a clinical rotation would be fun).  This one is a stretch for me but there may be someone out there who would enjoy this.

3. Something that will help you with PANCE.  We had a few do cardiology rotations bc it's the largest section of the exam.  No idea if they feel it helped.