Please help...

One approach may be to talk to the powers that be at your school and see if you could defer a month of your medicine rotation in place of at least one elective (even if it's at your home institution). I don't know how open they would be to the idea, but getting one away under your belt is probably better than none. Then you can do an elective in Oct. etc... I think that if you explain your situation (to the right people- aka people who know how important it is to do away rotations) they may give you a little slack and they may direct you in the proper direction. The problem may come that it could be difficult to secure away rotations if your "third year clerkships" are not technically completed. If that's the case, you're kinda stuck. I guess it kinda depends on how much medicine you finished before your accident. But if you are a strong candidate, not doing an away rotation very early may not hurt your chances of securing interviews. That is assuming that you don't plan on getting letters from the away programs. Just in case, I would try to secure LORs from faculty in your ortho dept. early for application purposes. If that is the case, you may even want to tie your experience into your personal statement/application with the hope that programs don't count that against you. Good luck.

If you have good scores and are a competitive applicant academically speaking then I believe the only thing to worry about is the LORs. There are more people than you think that don't do aways (married with family, pansy like the other kid in a different post
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, etc). Plus there are people like me who did only one or maybe 2 and didn't like the program. I did get great LORs but ended up putting 1 program on the rock bottom of my list. Good luck to you, do your best on improving the rest of your app and making any conections you can at home. A lot of this process is who you know and who knows who you know.

I only did one away month, and I don't think this affected my application. I was, though, asked about my away rotations at probably 12 out of 14 interviews. None of the interviewers seemed put off by only doing one away, but I don't know how they would have responded if I hadn't done any. Just my 2 cents.

Because of my circumstances, I DID NOT do an away rotation, just did 2 at my home institution. DO NOT think it hurt my application a bit, but I was asked at almost every interview " where did you rotate", or "why did you not rotate with us?".

BE prepare to answer these questions, they will be asked. If its simply because you didnt want to go away anywhere, or you were "comfortable" at home, I dont think this goes over very well.

But I dont think it is necessary to do 3 rotations unless your application is a bit weaker and you need the exposure. 1 may be too few, three too many

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> 2 may be the right number.....but then again, it depends on your circumstances.

In your case it seems like a legit explaination if you can't get away, but october is NOT too late....but by all means, rock out on the rotation you do away, or it can only hurt you!


You still have time to get to know some of your local orthopods, be sure to do so....down time scrub in, pop in the OR for interesting cases, etc....it is necessary that you get great LOR's regardless of whether or not you do any aways!

Good luck!