We have one. No clue what they do...or how often they meet...or what they meet about.

Not sure how it is elsewhere, but interest groups at my home school are pretty much excuses for people to get leadership activities. When > 50% of the membership elects themselves presidents...I'm pretty much not interested in what they do.

I'm sure elsewhere it could be a pretty useful mouthpiece with the right students and advisors.

We didn't have one, so some friends and I started one. We do extra workshops teaching various things ortho related (sports med knee exam, advanced suturing, important radiology tidbits), we bring in one of the docs to give the "what is ortho surgery talk" at the beginning of the year, bring in current residents to talk about what residency is like, bring in a private practice and academic doc to talk about differences, bring in the recently matched 4th years to talk about what worked for them. We're currently working on some community service-type stuff (building shelves for the med-student lounge) or something along those lines. Hope that helps.