In other news, things are pretty exciting as far as fourth year goes! I have to get through three months of my surgery clerkship, but after that I have some very awesome electives and sub-internships. The way it works is that we had to fill our fourth year from July 2010 to May 2011 (which is when we graduate) with two sub-internships, two weeks of AHEC (explained below), and four electives. I did some extra work my first and second year that counted as an elective, so I only have to do three electives.
July: Missions trip to Ethiopia
I already told y'all about this, so I won't belabor the point. But this is still really, really, really exciting for Maggie & me, so please pray for us!
August:
Studying for (and taking) USMLE Step 2 (and some other stuff)aka "the boards" part 2. It's a two-day test; day one is sort of like Step 1, that test I took last year where I studied every day for 6 weeks, except it's not quite as hard. Day two is where you interview a few actors pretending to patients and prove that you can speak English well enough to tell someone that their appendix is about to explode and they need to go to surgery. I also plan to spend some time just fooling around doing nothing and possibly visiting Tennessee with friends.
September: Family Medicine Sub-Internship
As you might have assumed, a sub-internship is where they treat you like an intern (1st year resident), except you don't work quite as hard because they assume that you're still a living, breathing human being (plus, you are still technically paying the hospital/school roughly $10/hour for the privilege of working there, instead of them paying you roughly $4/hour like a resident.) The Family Medicine inpatient service is run by the family docs at Maryland; they are very good at primary care so the only patients in the hospital are the ones who are really, really sick. Thus, it's quite a challenging service! Looking forward to this month, even though it'll be one of the hardest in fourth year.
October: Western Maryland AHEC (Area Health Education Center)
I don't know where exactly in Western Maryland I'll be, but the basic story is that the University of Maryland has decided that seeing a bunch of underserved patients in the inner city isn't cool enough, so we should see a bunch of underserved patients way out in rural areas of Maryland. Most people have to do two months of this, but I got them to count Ethiopia as one of my months so I'm cool with that. Other med students are going to Southern Maryland, Eastern Shore, etc. and a few people get to stay in Baltimore and do public health.
November: Program of Assertive Community Treatment Psychiatry Elective
This sounded like a really cool elective, and hey! I enjoyed Psychiatry so I figured I'd check it out. Basically, we drive around and help people get the psych treatment they need. Should be interesting.
December-January: Off for residency interviews and hopefully going to Haiti with our friend Kez!
February: Materna
l-Fetal Medicine SubinternshipThis is really a fancy name for the only Obstetrics & Gynecology sub-I, which is to say you get treated like an OB/GYN intern except with more clinic. Still, I really like both obstetrics and gynecology, and since I had to do two sub-Is in 4th year I picked this one.
March: OB/GYN outpatient
I'll see OB/GYN clinic patients. Not too too much to say about this except I enjoyed it before, so I might as well do it some more.
April: Diagnostic Radiology
I slept through most of the radiology teaching sessions during my Medicine rotation this year, and they were a joke anyway. I'm still not all that great with basic radiology stuff, so I figured this would be a valuable experience. I am still thinking about maybe doing an ER month in April instead. For those of you wondering, the image is of the infamous Throckmorton Sign.
May: Graduation!
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