There's no need to do a general surgery rotation unless you want to. I didn't have any g surg letters and it didn't matter. Also, no one cares what your schedule looks like. You aren't going to get brownie points for taking a tough schedule. Just do what you need to do to get some experience, ortho letters, and away experience. I would recommend that you work as little as possible outside of your ortho rotations. I did 9 weeks of ortho as a 4th year, and basically took the rest of the year off by finding the easy rotations that don't require you to go in or stay more than a few hours per day. This has been the greatest year of my life!! You have the rest of your life to work hard-- take this chance to do what you want...

Great, glad to hear it. The impression I got was that as long as you do ortho and lots of it, the rest of your schedule doesn't matter much for match ... and it seems to be the correct impression.

I will try to take the rest of the year easy, but of course, there are school requirements. Plus, to tell the truth ... it's all easy once the match part is over. I can do Q2 call for a year in trauma as long as I know I don't have my entire life riding on whether my resident likes my brand of deodorant.

Thanks,
b