what are the orientation dates? is it must to attend it?
@btypic, you can see what the orientation dates are here: http://www.umkc.edu/orientation/freshman.cfm.
But yes, it is a requirement to attend one of the orientations because they’ll give you a lot of information, but more importantly they’ll give you your login to sign up for classes through Pathway: http://www.umkc.edu/registrar/pathway.asp after advising. School of Medicine students get first dibs at signing up for undergraduate classes (before other students on campus) because we get so few semesters in which to finish the Bachelor degree.
You can see the online list of classes here: https://umkc.umsystem.edu/psp/prdpa/EMPLOYEE/HRMS/c/COMMUNITY_ACCESS.CLASS_SEARCH.GBL?AITS_HDR_CODE=2.
If you live in the Kansas City area, it might be a good option to take summer classes at UMKC (or any of the schools in the University of Missouri system) to not only knock out some easy requirements but also get easy GPA points. If you’re out of state, you can take classes as well, but you’ll only get credit - they won’t be calculated as part of your GPA.
@PinkPrincess2014
First lets talk Pharmacology.
Yes, the main classroom style “traditional teaching” pharm will be over those two months. And yes it is a lot of information for two months. You have 5 hours of lecture a day 5 days a week for two months straight, and it is brutal. I would say by far the hardest course at the school of medicine. And yes there is some physiology, but most of it is rouge memorization.
In terms of other pharm courses, you actually start pharm exposure in Year 3. Each year there is a self paced pharm course that you have to take, with the exception of year 4, where you take the real pharm.
By self paced, they give you all the materials. Its basically like a packet of information that explains the pharmacology concepts and the teachers are available whenever you need them to answer your questions via email or meet with them. Basically you have four months to read the packet, and take a online test whenever you want before a set deadline. You schedule your test with the computer lab at the school whenever you want.
Year 3 - Introduction to Pharmacology: introduces you the very basics of pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, and the some basic drugs to learn. (40 question test)
Year 4 - real pharm, you learn the mechanism of action, major side effects, etc for all organ systems (5 total exams during the two months)
Year 5 - with each core rotation (surgery, internal medicine (year 5 doro), psych, ob/gyn, and peds) you take an associated pharm test. It is meant to increase your knowledge in the that specific subspecialty on drugs to be careful about, ways to treat common conditions, and basically build up on what you learn in your cores. (5 exams, each with the core rotation, there is a set date for each pharm exam when you are on the rotation, each test is 20 questions)
Year 6 - Ambulatory Care pharmacology, they give you a couple packets and you take a 40 question test to sort of wrap it all up.
The sad thing is, and I am no exception to this, 50% will actually take those packets to heart and study them, and 50% won’t and just get lucky with guessing. But if you actually study the packets, you will have good pharmacology foundation.
Starting clinic in year 3, and then starting doro in year 4:
Everyone actually looks forward to this. This is the part you came to UMKC specifically for. You can’t wait to start seeing patients and taking care of people. No one complaints that we start this early. We all love this aspect of the program. You feel like you’re finally practicing medicine instead of sitting around in class all day.
With that said, older students and docents know that you are a year 3 and have not had pharm or pathology. We tell you straight up on the first day of year 3 at orientation: Year 3 is the time to ask all the stupid questions in clinic, to make mistakes, and to learn. We don’t expect you to know anything at all.
Year 3’s have three goals:
- Learn how to take a proper and through history
- Learn and practice the physical exams skills that are taught to you at the same time in the clinical skills class
- Towards the end start to become faster at those two things.
As a year 3, you will not be expected to come up with assessments and plans for patients, or even correct diagnoses. That’s not the point. The point is to get comfortable with patients.
Each clinic year has a goal:
Year 3 - master the history and physical.
Year 4 - master differential diagnoses.
Year 5 - master the assessment and plan.
Year 6 - you should be able to do the whole thing and the docent is basically there to confirm your plan.
This is also where the Junior/Senior partnership comes into the play. For the first few months of your clinic, essentially until December, you will be with your Senior Partner. You start off by shadowing them for a week or so, then you do one part of the whole thing, and then eventually you do everything and your senior partner watches you and then you go off on your own. Disclaimer: this is extremely team based. That is how my team does things, some teams push you to be more independent more quickly.
The exam and clinical assessments for clinic work like this:
- You will have 1-2 quizzes a year and 1 final exam. You will also have your docent’s clinical evaluation. And of course some busy work like two essays and stuff. The exam comes directly from the book they want you to read for clinic each year and the exact chapters you need to read each month are clearly labeled and given to you before you start clinic each year.
For DoRo:
Year 4 - clinical evaluations from all the attending you work with + a final exam written based on the lectures you have every week and the year 4 doro textbook (50 questions).
Year 5 - evaluations and the NBME internal medicine shelf exam
Year 6 - evaluations and the NBME advanced internal medicine shelf exam
Yes clinic does trump everything. You will have that half day off for every rotation to go to clinic that morning. Depending on the rotation, you to the rotation before and then you go to clinic in between. For example, when you are on surgery, you round at 5 am in the morning. So you will go to rounds in the morning, and then got to clinic at 8 am, then go back to surgery when you clinic is done at noon, or whenever. For pediatrics, you round at 8 am, so you just don’t go to rounds for that morning, and you go back to peds at noon. It depends on the rotation.
For classes, they specifically don’t schedule classes during 8-12 so you don’t miss class. For during year 3-4, you will never have class before noon. That is so that no one has to miss class because of clinic.
You can be away from clinic 4 months total during year 6. Don’t know the number for the other years, but you don’t really have to do anything to miss clinic anyways for those years. You will still have to go to clinic if you are on a study month for step 1. You don’t go to clinic if you are on vacation or if you are on an away rotation. But again, vacations and away rotations count as those 4 months that you can miss clinic from.
Does doro get old? Yes. First time its exciting, second time its even less so, and I can’t even imagine what I will feel like doing it a third time my final year. BUT, having said that, its a fun two months. After you figure it out, which essentially takes like two weeks to get used to: you are familiar with the system, you know exactly what to do, and its with you team each time! Its like a fun break. On DoRo, in the afternoons you hang out with your team, we go to happy hour together, we go to movies together, we watch movies together on our unit, we have pot lucks. Its like a fun two months, and you miss your team afterwards. The other rotations are not that lax and you are with diff people each time.
Does clinic get old? Not really. Again once you get over the initial learning curve, its the same thing every week. And after a while it becomes like a “break” from the rest of med school. You look forward to clinic day cuz that’s the day where you don’t have to round, or deal with seeing patients in your new rotation, etc. And you see your team, which, depending on whether you like your team or not can be a good or bad thing. Most people love their team.
Do we resent internal medicine? Not really. Sure we complain about it but its like a familiar home to us. I mean yea I get tried of it, but I would say its the opposite of making people steer away from it. Because its in such a home-ish environment that we are exposed to internal medicine, a lot of students decided to pursue it because its what we know and what we are comfortable with. That’s partly the reason why students go into primary medicine. Because they are exposed to it so much they get used to it, and don’t see themselves doing anything else.
I hope that answers all of your questions.
@PinkPrincess2014 @smarterthanaslug @sar793 @vishalmittal @popsys @btypic @ang331 @xiaomeimei77 @15match
@Butterfly16 @ckokafor99 @HopingMD @jjbinks295 @tangent2medicine
Congratulations guys!!
@blugrn6, wow, they finally removed Year 4 Self-Paced Pharm? I thought that would never happen. There’s gotta be a catch. Such a pain studying for that and Step 1 during Year 4.
I am not afraid of hard work, but I also am not a masochist - this sound like intentional infliction of mental distress!
I have looked at other medical schools, and yes one must get up early for surgery rotation and then go to classes, but there is no extra “clinic rotation.” Perhaps I am dense, but I have not seen anything like this at any other medical school, @Blugrn6 please correct me if I am wrong?
Do you really feel you are being trained to be the best possible doctors, or is this just over-load leading to mediocrity? Or are all medical schools like this, and I just never realized it before?
I know @blugrn6 will answer, but @HopingMD it’s not really “extra”. All rotations: OB-Gyn, General Surgery, Pediatrics, Family Medicine, Psychiatry, etc. know about UMKC’s Internal Medicine Docent clinics. Many of the attendings and residents are UMKC grads who are well aware of this also. UMKC’s medical school revolves around the Docent system: See @PinkPrincess2014’s link: http://www.med.umkc.edu/docs/Docent_Handbook_2013.pdf (See the sections Docent Clinics and Docent Rotation). All your rotations know that on your clinic morning you will not be in rotation during clinic time, as @blugrn6 said. Honestly, in my experience, on some rotations that I absolutely hated (like OB-Gyn and Surgery) I was happy to go to IM clinic, if not for the sole purpose of getting a breather on not being on rotation during that time.
You are correct, no other traditional medical school has this type of setup (that I know of) in terms of a continuous half-day per week clinic for all 4 years, but to be fair, medical schools can choose for themselves how to structure their curriculum to achieve certain competencies, with some things being non-negotiable: USMLE exams, etc. The LCME gives certain accreditation rules that all U.S. allopathic medical schools must meet. Obviously, some medical schools do things better than others.
“intentional infliction of mental distress!” LOL. Trust me, @HopingMD, this is the most benign in terms of “intentional infliction of mental distress” you’ll get in medical school especially at UMKC.
Sorry guys! I totally forgot about year 4 self paced pharm: rational and safe drug prescribing. I cannot remember what that was all about for the life of me. I think its because I was studying for Step 1.
@Roentgen you’re right it was just such a nuisance, I totally forgot about it because I didn’t even look at the packet haha. I just walked into that test blind because my primary goal was to just pass that stupid thing.
@HopingMD
Just to add to what @Roentgen said: I agree, clinic doesn’t really talk away from other core and honestly it really is a break. I cannot tell you how excited I was on my clinic day during labor and delivery. It meant that I did not have to delivery any babies after delivering like ten the four days before.
Or on surgery, be so glad I did not have to scrub into my 9th laproscopic cholecystectomy because I had clinic! Once you get used to it, its a great little break every week that built into your schedule.
Also the thing that I really like about clinic is this: rarely do you get the opportunity to have so much time to perfect yourself in a benign and friendly environment. Once you get used to it, you have the rest of the three years left to sort of perfect and create your own “style” of interviewing, examining and dealing with patients. You won’t quite see what I mean until you start it, but everyone has their own way to interacting with patients. That “style” and confidence in seeing patients and having excellent bed side manner only comes with practice, something that students at other medical schools are not allowed a opportunity to practice. That’s why UMKC is known for its great clinical training, because really if you graduate from here one this is for sure: you know how to talk to and behave around patients.
Not saying that you won’t be able to be just at great at other medical schools, but you just have more experience.
At a traditional medical school patient interaction begins in your third year. When you graduate and enter residency you have two years of patient interaction behind you, and that’s great.
When you graduate from UMKC, you get the first two years of docent, where you just essentially go talk to patients to learn how to not be awkward around people and in uncomfortable settings. You docent essentially asks you to go interview a patient they have and then come report back to them about their history (again this is different based on your docent). Then you have years 3 and 4 of clinic and doro where you get to learn how to ask a history and do a physical, and then you enter your two years of core curriculum like everyone else. When you graduate, you will have had essentially 4 extra years of patient interaction behind your belt, and in some cases it can become apparent that you are more sort of experienced, if that makes sense.
Year 1 and 2 docent isn’t that big of a deal cuz its only twice a week, but it does make a little difference. I was not scared about seeing a patient in clinic at all as a third year on the first day of clinic, because I had done it for the last two years.
@Blugrn6 and @Roentgen, I noticed you both didn’t like your Surgery and OB-Gyn rotations, is it just really bad experience there or something?
@PinkPrincess2014, I don’t think it’s anything particular to UMKC, but at any medical school, the Obstetrics & Gynecology rotation and General Surgery rotation tend to be the toughest rotations in terms of the time you have to get up (i.e. Surgery was like you got up at like 4:00/4:30 am), the number of hours you are on your feet, etc. Not surprisingly, those tend to be the hardest rotations to get Honors grades in, especially with evaluations from residents who aren’t always fair graders.
Not to mention, the residents in those specialties don’t tend to be the nicest (this is just my opinion - I’m sure some surgeon-phile/ob-gyn-phile will disagree with me) mainly because of the overall culture of those specialties but also because they themselves are tired, sleep-deprived, hungry, thirsty, crabby, etc. These specialties aren’t very amenable to lifestyle overall.
You’ll notice very quickly on rotations that different specialties have different overall personalities. A fun cartoon: http://theunderweardrawer.blogspot.com/2011/03/12-medical-specialty-stereotypes-2011.html. Rightfully or wrongfully, many of them fit the “stereotype”.
This is just my opinion, because there were people in my class who obviously went for OB-Gyn and General Surgery so obviously they liked it enough to go into it. I tend to be more laid back overall, so even if I loved the intellectual content of those fields, there would be no way I’d be able to tolerate working day-to-day with residents in those fields for 4/5 years.
I did notice that on this year’s match list only 3 people went for General Surgery which is a lot less than usual.
@PinkPrincess2014
In some ways yes.
Surgery is just miserable because its 5AM to 6PM everyday, with 5, 30 hour trauma calls in the two months (so you come to work at 5AM and then leave after 10AM the next day after rounds are over).
Its a lot of standing. Some attendings and residents take their anger out at you because they are more exhausted than you are and you just have to deal with it.
With that said, the surgery residents honestly have the best personalities. They are hilarious. Its just that I am not about that life at all.
But I have friends who LOVED it and are doing general surgery after they did the rotation. They loved abdominal surgeries, they love getting into the abdomen and pushing poop around (running the bowel) and removing gallbladders etc. I just don’t like it, I’m not a fan of bloody surgeries. Or long 5-6 hours procedures. But some people truly have a passion for it.
Ob/gyn is weird. The residents have way too much attitude, and right fully so because they are all overworked and pregnant (I’m serious, at least 4 residents at any given time are pregnant on the 6th floor at Truman). And with all due respect, child birth is just not my cup of tea. I hate amniotic fluid and all the smells in the room and the screaming and the crying and delivering the bloody placenta after the birth. I hate doing pelvic exams. But again, I have friends who fell in LOVE with it during their rotation. They are like how could not like it? Childbirth is beautiful. Thank god they like it cuz I would quit med school if I had to do that for the rest of my life.
I LOVED my peds rotation, it was amazing. I loved all parts of it. I loved dealing the parents and the kids, in clinic and in the hospital. So much so that I would consider doing a peds fellowship after residency in my desired field of interest. I have a friend who hated peds I mean absolutely miserable, cannot stand kids, cannot deal with the parents, hates her life on the rotation.
So its not that we are biased by it. A lot of people like things for different reasons and its good to keep an open mind when you start your core rotations. It’s not that I hate long hours, but I kinda hate being in the hospital all the time. I am more of an outpatient clinic and quick procedures sorta guy.
For those in the program, what’s the most common major chosen and why? Also, can someone explain the BLA major? Lastly, how hard would it be to place into an anesthesiology residency from this program?
I felt the same way @Blugrn6 felt on those rotations – The way I knew I wanted to do Pediatrics is bc everytime after a delivery on OB-Gyn, I felt like going to the newborn under the lamp and cleaning them up, doing Apgar scores, etc. not staying with the mom and cleaning up, sewing up any lacerations, etc. I absolutely loved my Peds rotation at Children’s Mercy Hospital (which is why I went into Peds and subspecialized).
I had friends however, who may have liked Peds but just realized it wasn’t for them – they liked dealing with the kids, but were turned off with dealing with overbearing parents. That’s part of the deal with Pediatrics - you deal with parents as well as treating the child as there will be some who won’t even let you touch their child if they don’t trust you. That’s why being successful in medicine is so much more than just knowing scientific knowledge, and I think that’s hard for incoming students to grasp, especially since a lot of the first 2 years of medical school is studying and doing well on multiple choice exams. There are some people who don’t like dealing with children in general (I think they’re weird, but to each his/her own).
You’ll learn very quickly, which rotations/specialties you have an affinity for, which ones you can at least appreciate what they do, and which ones you abhor. I agree with @Blugrn6, if I had to do deliveries at all hours of the night for the rest of my life, I would be so depressed. I always thought it was my bad luck with OB-Gyn residents, but it seems like nothing has changed. Not surprisingly, most of the people who went for OB-Gyn in my class tried to match at programs outside of UMKC.
@vishalmittal, I placed into an Anesthesiology residency. It’s not a “competitive” specialty and UMKC has grown its anesthesiology research in the department much more. If you look at past match lists 2003-2014, that @UMKCRoosMD posted in this thread, you’ll see that people have no problem placing into that field, usually though in more middle-tier/strong middle-tier programs.
@vishalmittal, this is the BLA degree with the MD degree here: http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2014-2015/SOM_BLA_MD_2014_2015.pdf
@Blugrn6 and @Roentgen
Thank you!
I now understand what you mean from feeling your passions and enjoyment to get into clinic! Your feelings tell much more than a 1,000 words could share. I understand you, and actually I now see this as a BIG PLUS for picking UMKC!
Thanks
: )
@PinkPrincess2014
That link was wonderful, is there one for the biology and chemistry major as well?
@vishalmittal, yes here:
Biology: http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2014-2015/SOM_BA_MD_Bio_2014_2015.pdf
Chemistry: http://www.umkc.edu/majormaps/maps/2014-2015/SOM_BA_MD_Chem_2014_2015.pdf
@HopingMD, yeah, it’s not really “extra” per say, more accurately would be to say it’s sort of built into the cake. That being said, I know people in my class who by the time 6 years was up, absolutely hated Docent Rotation and Docent clinics, and couldn’t wait to never have to do Internal Medicine again. It varies and is difficult to predict beforehand. A lot of it is knowing what specialties you want to shoot for.
I went into Anesthesiology for a reason. lol.