Choosing A Base Site (Part 1)

I’m not entirely sure how each medical school sends off their students to do their clinical rotations in their 3rd and 4th year, but for us, the way they did it was probably the fairest method they could think of (aka equally unfair for everyone).

They tried, they really did, but choosing a base site for rotations during your clinical years can be a very stressful time.

My school is committed to making doctors who will hopefully eventually want to serve the rural/under-served parts of West Virginia. As such, we’re mandated to stay in WV for our third year rotations. We also have a host of different requirements that we have to fulfill in order to graduate. Our fourth year is open to wherever we want to go, so long as we fulfill all our requirements by the time we graduate.

For this reason, West Virginia was split into 6 geographical locations, with about 20-ish base sites altogether, and in the first semester of our second year, we had a Site Selection Night to find out where we’d be spending our next year.

Each site has a certain number of allotted spots, and if there are more students who want that site than there are spots, the site gets thrown into lottery.

Names are drawn out of a hat, and if you’re lucky, you get picked. If you’re not, you’re basically left with your last choice because that’s the only region with a spot left, and people didn’t pick that particular site for a reason. If you wanted to, you were allowed to couples-match (much like in residency! :P ) with a spouse, significant other, or best friend, but if one of you didn’t get the spot, neither of you would.

It was intense, it was stressful, there were sighs of relief, laughter, hugs, pre-emptive game plans, team meetings, and strategizing…and there was also backstabbery, uncontrollable tears, and people changing their minds at the last minute and throwing entire regions into lottery.

It was rather reminiscent of The Hunger Games and we may or may not have treated it as such just to cope.

One of the girls in my region has family around here, and is a single mother with a 2-year-old daughter, so my friends and I made the agreement that if she didn’t get this site, one of us would switch with her so that she could be with her family.

In years past, families have been broken up because a student wanted to ~*get to know*~ the classes below him (read: he was extremely sleazy and apparently without conscience), and with the class below us, students have straight-up threatened to hurt other students if they change their mind and throw their first-choice site into lottery.

…So I like to think our class did pretty well despite the super-high stress!

• Where the hecks did I end up? I guess if you’ve been following me for a while, you probably have an idea of where I am right now, haha. :]
• Did I get my top choice?!
• What factors did I consider when I was trying to decide on what my top choice would be?

Find out more next week! :]