Clinical Rotations are an important part of students within the medical program or internships to get real-time knowledge and skills from being in a real hospital environment with patients. During your clinical rotation, you can learn how to give physical exams, oral case presentations, and learn how to communicate and assist patients.
There are different kinds of Clinical Rotations available for you to get a variety of experience in medical practices to boost your knowledge and skillset for when you complete your PMQ. Within this blog, we will show you your options when applying for different clinical rotations to know which one could be best for your interests.
Medical Surgery
Medical-Surgical, AKA, Med-Surg is a clinical rotation that focuses on surgical operations for serious or minor diseases or injuries. A lot of medical students do not have any interest or desire to do a med-surg clinical, but it does put you in a real-time situation to help you understand the process and procedures of common surgeries.
This can help you reassure patients about the steps and processes within the surgeries they are about to undergo. Additionally, if you are going into nurse tech/CNA, it can develop stronger habits in your career. You have opportunities to assist patients to the bathroom, do blood glucose checks, place SCDs, help ambulate patients, and more to build your expertise as a future nursing assistant.
Family Medicine
Family Medicine focuses on medical practices for all ages from infants to elderly you will study and work with a variety of patients and how to communicate with them. A clinical rotation that focuses on family medicine will be 80 weeks of unique challenges to becoming a physician.
If you are not sure if family medicine is your preferred interest, you can choose to try out a clinical rotation to see if it is the right area of interest for you. Family medicine is a highly sought-after field, so it might be difficult to find an opening for those clinical rotations. That is why C.H.H.A. helps IMGs obtain their desired US clinical experience, so aspiring physicians can get the tools they need to become successful.
Internal Medicine
Clinical rotations on internal medicine will focus on helping students to learn how to diagnose, prevent, and treat internal diseases. The primary focus on running diagnostics tests and procedures will help students in real time be able to manage and determine what solutions would work best for their patients. Internal medicine can help students learn how to manage patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. By doing a clinical rotation to study internal medicine, students can expand their knowledge and quick thinking when it comes to problem-solving patients' new, underlying, or preexisting conditions. While studying internal medicine, students can learn how to work directly with pharmacists and social workers to get a broader understanding of how the healthcare field functions and works in sync with the services an internal medicine nurse or doctor provide.
Pediatrics
This clinical rotation is a 6-10 week clerkship that teaches students how to give accurate, effective, and preventive care for infants and children. Some of the core concepts in pediatrics include how to identify growth, development, and any behavioral issues in infants and children. Pediatrics can be seen as a stressful rotation since children act and behave differently than typical adult patients. That is the reason why this clerkship is important for students who want to go into pediatrics is to learn how to properly communicate and take care of patients who are not able to directly express or communicate their symptoms. While this can be a stressful clinical rotation, the impact of helping a child’s life is one of the most rewarding experiences you can have while studying pediatrics.
Psychiatry
This clerkship is vastly different from the rest since it focuses on diagnosing, treating, and preventing mental, behavioral disorders, and emotional issues in patients. These issues are not so direct and easy to identify, that is what makes studying psychiatry so difficult. Mental health more than ever is one of the most important areas of medicine to study, as a student, it will be very challenging but it will make you more confident in your field to be able to help those who struggle with emotional and mental illnesses. Identifying and knowing how to treat mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder can save someone’s life in the long run of things. Students will also get a lot of hands-on experience working with psychiatrists and psychologists to expand their knowledge of mental disorders and how they are managed, treated, and diagnosed.
These are just a few of the many different clinical rotations that can help medical students further their careers and knowledge in their specific desired area of medicine. Plus, doing these rotations can help you understand if that area of medicine is right for you and if you enjoy the environment is a good fit for where you want to pursue the rest of your career. Even if you choose not to pursue that specific area of medicine, you will learn and expand your expertise on different medical, communication, and problem-solving techniques you can take into different areas of your work. If you are preparing to do a clinical rotation but are struggling to find the right clerkship for you, C.H.H.A. is here to help. If you are interested you can apply now for our clinical clerkships or you can contact us with any questions or concerns.
