winterallsummer Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 Better or worse than didactic year? Really curious what people's experiences are/were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpSite Posted June 13, 2013 Share Posted June 13, 2013 QOL: MUCH better in clinical year. Stress: MUCH less in clinical year. Challenge: well, depends on what challenges you. I am finding clinicals to be a more enjoyable and instant gratification kind of challenge. I'm liking clinicals significantly more than didactic.......the worst day in clinic is better (IMO) than the best day in didactic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenniijennjen Posted June 14, 2013 Share Posted June 14, 2013 This is a JOY to hear!!! :) I'm so looking forward to clinicals! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpSite Posted June 14, 2013 Share Posted June 14, 2013 This is a JOY to hear!!! :) I'm so looking forward to clinicals! Hang tight!! It's SO worth the pain. I promise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chickitabanana Posted June 14, 2013 Share Posted June 14, 2013 I remember when I was a first year student a second year student at my program told me she missed didactic year sometimes. I thought she was crazy, until I entered clinical year and understood what she meant. Yes, it's definitely better because the stress of exams is not as high (although we still had end of rotation exams at my school), but your time is "more your own" during didactic year. What I mean by that is: during first year you're able to dictate how you spend your time vs. second year. While you shouldn't skip class, if you're really exhausted you can maybe skip a class and sleep in -- can't do that on clinicals. You can also decide once class is over when you're going to study, when you're going to take a break and go to the gym, etc. Once you're on rotations your schedule is set for you and for the most part you have no control over it. At my program we didn't get any vacation time during clinical year either. So while it's nice to not have to spend your entire weekend studying for exams like didactic I did miss having a week off for spring break, summer break, winter break, etc. every few months. Was didactic year better than 70 hr weeks on surgery rotations? Yes, especially if you hate surgery. (I work in surgery, but those who hated surgery found these months even worse.) Was didactic year better than working 12 days straight on Internal Medicine because your call schedule gave you a "black weekend"? Yes. Was didactic year better than primary care rotation working 9-4? No way. Once you get comfortable with a hospital/clinic, the staff, the patients, the routine, the specialty etc. your 4-6 weeks is over and you start another entirely new specialty in a new setting with new staff and a new routine and it repeats month after month. You could be on primary care for a month working 9-5, then go to ED where you're on a rotating schedule, then you're on OB/GYN with clinic hours during the day and on call all hours of the night for deliveries, then you go back to a second primary care month with 9-5 hours, and then you're on Internal Medicine for two months straight with long days, call every 4th night, working weekends etc. First year was one very long year where I got used to functioning on 6-7 hrs of sleep a night and was in a routine. During clinical year your schedule is always changing and once your body adapts and you stop being tired it switches again. I found it to be exhausting and was "burnt out" before it was over. Overall, I think clinical year is better than didactic year so this post isn't meant to deflate your hopes! It's so much nicer to learn medicine when you're actually seeing patients with real diseases instead of sitting in a library reading a book about them. I just think that clinical year presents its own challenges and stresses that are different from didactic year. Some months will obviously be more challenging than others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winterallsummer Posted June 14, 2013 Author Share Posted June 14, 2013 Would you say the people who are not as crazy about clinical year are those who didn't necessarily have a lot of patient care hours (eg just volunteered, worked in a pharmacy, lab, etc)? Do you study every day for the exam or is it more looking up what you saw that day? Do you take weekends off? Are the end of rotation exams as bad as they are in the clinical year? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staplemyfoot Posted June 15, 2013 Share Posted June 15, 2013 Clinical year is pretty challenging, but it's allot more enjoyable then first year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taotaox1 Posted June 17, 2013 Share Posted June 17, 2013 I am am really psyched to start clinicals. Much longer doing 8-5 required lectures 5 days a week and then trying to study for those lectures and I might have lost it :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chickitabanana Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 Would you say the people who are not as crazy about clinical year are those who didn't necessarily have a lot of patient care hours (eg just volunteered, worked in a pharmacy, lab, etc)? Do you study every day for the exam or is it more looking up what you saw that day? Do you take weekends off? Are the end of rotation exams as bad as they are in the clinical year? Don't get me wrong, clinical year is DEFINITELY better than didactic year, but your original question was if it's less stressful and if the QOL is better. It's definitely still stressful (but in different ways) and your QOL depends on your current rotation. I never said I wasn't as crazy about clinical year either. Clinical year was probably the coolest year of my life. Even as a working PA I don't think any year will top clinical year. Practically everything I saw was something I'd never seen before and I got to do things I'll never get to do again. I delivered 8 babies, I sutured someones tongue back together, and saw a 2 DAY OLD INFANT have open heart surgery to correct transposition of the great vessels. I learned so much medicine and I saw common (and a few rare) medical conditions first hand day after day. It was amazing, but it wasn't always a walk in the park. There is a reason PAs tell you that PA school is "TWO of the hardest years of your life" not "one really awful year and another not-so-bad year." I worked for two years and had 2500 HCE hours before starting PA school so it's not that I wasn't used to working and seeing patients every day. Working then is different than "working" as a student. First of all, you know what you're doing in your job now and are comfortable with the routine. You are able to leave when your shift is over and go home and relax. Clinical rotations aren't simply work -- it's still an education, but outside of a classroom. You leave when you're told you can leave and then when you get home you either study or you work on a presentation or whatever other assignments you have for that rotation. Also, every 4-6 weeks you're walking into an environment where you don't know anyone, you don't know the specialty, and you don't know what's expected of you. That in and of itself can be stressful for some people and then once you get comfortable it's switched up again. My classmates and I would joke sometimes that we just wanted to go "back to our bubble" of our classroom where we were all together and knew what to expect (and what was expected of us). I didn't study every day for the exam and sometimes took weekends off. When I did study over the weekend it was not nearly as much as my weekend studying during didactic year. The way my program was set up our didactic exams were our entire grade for a class. During clinical year exams were 20% and evaluation was 75% (the other 5% was attendance at call backs) so it wasn't as necessary to do as well on the clinical exams. We still had to pass them, but our grade for the rotation wasn't solely based on them. Plus, on clinicals you're usually expected to go home and read about your patients or read about them during the day. Even just seeing your patients throughout a hospital course helps teach you about the disease. Getting pimped in the on rounds or in the OR? Studying. Trust me, questions you get wrong when you were pimped is probably something you'll never forget :) My PA program was affiliated with a medical school and thus various teaching hospitals which provided lunchtime lectures on certain medical topics, grand rounds, etc. All of that helped me "study" in a way. The exams weren't as bad as during didactic year, but really this is a moot point unless you're attending the same school I went to. I can't really comment on how other schools' exams are. All in all, clinical year is better and something to look forward to for sure! But there will be some hard months and there will be other stressful things to deal with. I promise none of it is as bad as weekly didactic exams, though (and the fear of possibly failing out hanging over your head for 12 straight months). Here is a funny (but accurate) video of clinical year for a medical student (which is essentially the same as a PA student) that Vanderbilt made: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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