I'm confused about residencies.

Bigredmed
Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:19:56 +0000

Medical students do rotations in a variety of fields during the 3rd and 4th years - the five standards are: Internal Med, Surgery (general, but some schools give exposure to sub-specialties), Psychiatry, Pediatrics and OB/GYN.

In general, you are correct that residency occurs after graduating medical school. However, Internal Medicine is only a 3 year residency.

There are very few, very unique number of programs that exist in which you utilize the 4th year of medical school as the first year of residency. My school has a dual-tracked program (internal medicine and family practice tracks) in which this is the case, and it’s technically a 4 year program so you don’t get done any sooner. The intent is to produce Primary Care docs (though not all the grads end up in primary care, I know several which are actively pursuing fellowship aspirations at the moment). The draw is that if you know you want to go into primary care, and you have significant ties to the area, you might as well get paid for your fourth year (rather than taking out more loans), and the training the M4 students receive is excellent.

As for Scrubs - residency programs move their residents around from month to month, so that they get exposure to a lot of different areas. One month you may be on a general inpatient service, the next in Rheumatology clinic, the next doing an ER rotation, and the next doing only night shifts in the ICU. An internal medicine doc doing a month of surgery? Doesn’t sound exactly right especially with time in the OR (surgery residents are fiercely territorial about their time in the OR). But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, especially if it was only a month. I looked in Residency Review Requirements on the ACGME and they do talk specifically about ENT experience and non-operational Ortho…so it seems possible, though likely not probable.