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electives

Hey, everyone!

With exams ending and a new semester soon starting, it's only expected that we're all going to be thinking about and choosing elective courses. In my university, in order to get your degree you have to have taken at least 8 elective courses. Those offered in the first years aren't really all that interesting, meaning that so far we've all picked courses depending on how easy they were.

But since I'm now in the middle of my 4th year, I feel like it's time to change that. There are new courses offered, courses that can bring us closer to specialties we think we are interested into. The way I see it, this is our chance to figure out if we are actually interested into them, so that by the time the 6th year comes to its end we will have made up our minds on what residency to do.

But that's not the case with my classmates. Most of them are still choosing based on easy/no exams, mandatory lectures, etc.

Am I being unrealistic? Should I focus more on the main courses, or are electives really going to help me decide what I want to do for the rest of my life and perhaps even learn a few things beforehand?

How do you choose electives?

Reply 1

belis

Our electives were called SSC (student selected components) and lasted only 4 weeks. I think I had 4 in total. I have chosen them on the basis of what I was interested in. I think they were useful for gaining insight into specialties. I have done one in ITU, one in anesthetics. Both involved early morning starts and a lot of time in hospital in addition to the written report but it was time well spent in terms of gaining experience. I really enjoyed it as well. I have also done one SSC in a methadone clinic. That was a real eye opener. I had fantastic time and by chance got a national prize out of the report that I have written there.

I was asked a lot about my SSCs and elective in my specialty interview. It may have something to do with the fact that they were all centered around anesthetics and I was applying for psychiatry. lol I had to be creative to prove my commitment to specialty.

What you get out of your electives is what you put in. It's up to you. Bare in mind if you are applying for competitive specialties is that many students will use them to gain relevant experience and often audits, posters and presentations to strengthen their CVs.

Reply 2

medstud4

Thank you for your reply!

I know it's still early to make that decision, but at the moment what I am intersted in is surgery, and in fact cardiothoracic surgery. That's an elective and not a main course here, and there's also paediatric cardiology offered. I understand that they both have a lot of material to study and it will be hard to find the time to prepare adequately, given that I will have to take them during the same semester. But I am really intrigued by them, and I believe it's worth having a tough schedule for a couple of months, if it means I'll learn so much about the field I may be working in one day.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 3

Fission_Mailed

We only do one SSM here, as a 4 week placement in 4th year. I've chosen pre-hospital emergency care (i.e. ambulances and rapid response vehicles); in some ways it sounds like an easy option. I don't have to do any exams/coursework, and there are only 12 shifts during the placement, with the rest of the time being my own. But this is balanced out by the fact that those shifts will include weekends and runs of nights. The people I know who have done it already say that it was pretty much their hardest month of medical school, but also their most rewarding.

I went for this SSM a) because it is relevant to what I want to do with my career and b)because it is nothing like anything else I'll get to do in my 5 years. There were SSMs available in EM and anaesthetics but we do a critical care block in 5th year that also features these, so why not try something really cool?