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Post by giannucci on Jun 19, 2006 20:03:04 GMT -5
This is an awesome elective. You do consults and thus work consult hours. No call, no weekends. You don't have to write notes unless you have actual recommendations to make...an interesting concept. Typically you see 1-2 new patients a day and are given a good amount of time (hours) to go through the chart of the patient who has been in the hospital for weeks and tasted all 31 flavors of antibiotic the ICU has to offer. So you have time to look everything up and actually make decent recommendations. The best part of the elective, however, is the almost constant teaching by the attendings and fellows. Additionally the weekly conferences are excellent, and there is tons of food around for those who care about eating.
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Post by jabbasmd on Sept 25, 2006 18:14:27 GMT -5
I just finished this elective in August 2006 and loved it. I am going into IM so I really thought it would be useful for that, but I am hard pressed to think of an internship in whihc you would not beneft from this. I woudl particularly recommend it to people going into IM, surgery, FM, and Path, as we worked a closely with those fields.
Hours: Consult service, 8-5, no weekends. very flexible if days off needed for personal reasons, interviews, etc...
People: 1 fellow, an attending, maybe a resident, maybe an intern, you. Everyone is a lot of fun to work with especually the fellows (Rose, Berg) and the attendings (Newman, Haburchak, Mohan were the ones I worked with).
The experience: You are treated like a Sub-I. Your fellow gives you a name, a location, a 2 line synopsis, and the rest is up to you. You do the initial workup, you independently recommend the treatment course, and if the bosses like the plan, then that's the plan. You have a lot of autonomy on the service if you want it. (I'm sure 3rd years taking this would be supervised more closely, esp early in the year).
Why it's good:
You see both aspects of ID, namely managing bread and butter infections that other specialties aren't well trained to handle (but probably could be), and then you see things that only ID specialists usually handle. For example, you will see a lot of management of MRSA, HIV (although less now that there is a separate ID inpt service), line infections, prosthetic joint infections, and pregnancy infections. As you can see, these issues come up in almost every specialty, hence the usefulness of this elective despite what you're going into.
Then, you see the wild stuff, like botulism, nocardia brain abscesses, meningitis, encephalitis, etc... So this keeps it interesting and gives you and idea of what it's like to be a real ID doc.
Bonus: Taking this before you take Step 2 CK will be HUGE, as you know antibiotics and treatment plans for all the common infections like the back of your hand. A really nice way to get some general adult med exposure while also specifically learning a ton about ID...
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Post by drdrizzle on Mar 24, 2007 13:00:15 GMT -5
I agree with these guys. the rotation is flat out very amazing. You have patients in every floor including OB. You are treated as a resident. when you present a case and say your plan, most of the time the attending will say, "okay that sounds good. lets do that." And you may not even have discussed your plan with the fellow! he may be hearing about the case for the first time. so you get an amazing amount of automomy.
However, this is not a fourth year rotation for those wanting to relax. Since you are expected to take care of your patients fully, you will have spend time doing some reading before. For example this is how it works. The fellow will call you any time during the day with new consults (having a pager is VERY helpful) the fellows hates calling people. You go see them, but by the time you round, you need to be ready so you have to do some reading about the problem (it is a speciality service after all). So its a good way to incorporate evidence based learning in real time.
So in general, the hours can be long, rounds can be long, and you will be busy all day, a lot of walking at the VA and MCG. Seeing your old patients in the AM and new patients all day and then rounding. Anybody interested in Medicine SHOULD take this elective. And anybody else that is super motivated. but that should be it.
oh and the latest sanford guide to microbes is essential. bring it the first day you are there. you will finally learn how to use it. you dont need any other book.
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Post by drdrizzle on Mar 24, 2007 16:07:17 GMT -5
Having said that, i would applaud any student who is going into any surgery, esp orthopedics to take ID consults. A lot of the patients are from those services b/c of post op infections. And abbas is right. they could manage some of these things, but dont. you would really get good exposure to the "other side" and make you a much better surgeon ie less post op deaths. you would understand the ID docs approach to the patient. and it would be an eye opening experience. and they would love to have you.
After taking this elective, you might be the only surgeon that carries around a sanford guide. that's a good thing.
dd
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Post by wowposter on Nov 5, 2008 21:21:10 GMT -5
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