I've had multiple people talk to me recently about picking an elective rotation and how they should go about making this decision. It seems to me that most of us have various different specialties that we like and its hard to pick just one (or two) for your elective. I'm going to share my personal thought process that I went through to decide what I would chose as my elective. I'm sure there are many other ways to pick an elective but these are just the few things I thought about.
1. Specialty that I need to get better at
Dermatology has always been one of my weaknesses. I find it so difficult to keep all the rashes, their etiology, presentation, treatment, etc. straight in my head. Its such a challenge for me to recognize a rash and to come up with a differential. I remember on my first rotation I used to (and sometimes still do) get stumped when my preceptor asked me to describe the rash. Even something so simple that comes easily to most people is such a challenge for me. I decided that for me, working in family medicine is always going to be an option. And for that reason, I figured that I needed to be able to recognize a rash and know how to treat a patient versus when to refer them to derm. I also am one of those people that walks into a challenge purposely because I cannot just give in to the fact that its hard so I can't do it. So I kept derm in the mix.
2. What makes up most of PANCE
If you are in PA school, you know that some day you're going to have to take the dreaded boards. I contemplated for a while whether I wanted to focus my attention on a specialty that was tested pretty heavily on the PANCE. For example. cardiology is 16% of the PANCE and pulmonology is 12%. It would not hurt to do an elective rotation in either one of these specialties as that experience would help learn the content for PANCE. Studying something from a book versus seeing it in practice helps tremendously to connect the dots and to solidify the information in your head.
3. The one chance to discover any given speciality
I have been interested in OB/GYN (mostly the OB part) for a long time. Delivering babies and providing a would-be mom with prenatal/antenatal care and learning all about pregnancy has always been a dream of mine. What better time to learn all about a specialty that I'm interested in than during school?
4. Figure out if I really like what I think I like
For example, I needed to see if OB/GYN really is something I would enjoy doing every day and finding this out on rotations is better than accepting a job and finding out its not for me. This way, I'm not committed to a job and if I end up not liking it, I don't have to stay!
5. Availability of rotations
It all really boils down to what your options are. If your school allows/can find you a rotation in a specific speciality vs. can you find your own. Unfortunately neither my school or I could secure an OB/GYN rotation so I moved on to another one of my options and went with dermatology. It's my next rotation and I am looking forward to it!
There is really no wrong decision here, its just a tough one. This is just something that takes a little more thought and consideration. Discuss it with your friends/classmates, your advisor, spouse, etc. See what your options are and what works best for you. I hope this is helpful for y'all. If anyone has any additional tips, feel free to share it with the rest of us in the comments below!
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