Welcome to the next phase of your medical school career – the clerkships. These next two years will be some of the best days of your med school experience. By the time you get to this point, you have already accomplished so much. You’ve survived hours of lectures in the preclinical sciences, hours in the anatomy lab, and hours of physical diagnosis. Now is the time for you to put all that knowledge to work. It’s time to shine!
It’s difficult to mentally prepare for the change that takes place in the third year. The expectations are different. You no longer have the luxury of skipping that 9:00 a.m. lecture. In fact, on a lot of rotations, you’re already hours into your day by 9:00 a.m. You have to learn to function as part of a team and you have to redefine your time management skills to balance the time constraints of rotations with the time you need to study. At first it seems impossible to have enough time, but it doesn’t take long to find a routine that works for you. Pretty soon rotations become second nature. You learn to study in those spare five minutes between patients or surgical cases. Somehow you amass all this knowledge, and often you don’t even realize you’re doing it. That’s the beauty of the third year. You are learning constantly, often without even knowing it. Every patient you see has something to teach you.
This survival guide has been put together to give you a very general idea of what you can expect from the core clerkships. Of course, as you read each section, keep in mind that things can change from rotation to rotation, so every detail may not be exactly correct. But the basics of what to expect should remain the same. Most of all remember that, like so many things in life, your medical school experience is what you make of it. There will be good days and bad days, but you have a lot of power to shape your third year and make it great! Best of luck in the next phase of your journey!