My Plans for Clinical Training

Medical students' undergraduate medical education consists of two basic segments: training in the basic medical sciences, which takes about two years, and clinical training, which also takes about two years. (NB—I am taking three years to do the basic medical sciences rather than two, stretching out my learning so that I can learn it well, as I have found that 30 years' distance from studying the life sciences and chemistry has made it a little difficult but by no means impossible for me to learn the subjects I must learn to become a physician.)

In the clinical training, students learn to apply the science facts in clinical situations with real patients and thus transform what was merely knowledge of facts into wisdom, facts integrated with an understanding of how, why, and when to use those facts. These rotations consist first of required training in core areas and then electives. The core rotations are in: Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Surgery. I would like to do elective rotations in at least some of Cardiology, Geriatrics, Rural Medicine, and Sports Medicine, as well as additional rotations in Family Med and Psych.

To be sure, clinical rotations expose med students only the the basics of these specialties, partly so that they have that basic understanding so they can help patients broadly, but also partly so that they can be exposed to the various specialties to help them decide what they want to choose as their own specialty. Deeper and broader education in the specialty comes in graduate medical education during a residency.

Like most off-shore med schools in the Caribbean, The College of Medicine and Health Sciences (COMHS) has only the basic medical sciences training on its campus. For clinical rotations, students go to the U.S. or Great Britain. I shall return to the U.S. for clinical rotations in late spring or early summer 2008.

The school has clinical associations with several hospitals in the U.S. One such relationship is with Jackson Park Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, a good teaching hospital. It is in a difficult neighborhood but on a busy, well-kept, major street. The patients come largely from the surrounding area, and they need the hospital because it and its clinics provide necessary medical care that those folks would not otherwise have.

I am not fond of Chicago, but the school is keen on placing me there because I'm from Illinois, because they want to cultivate this relationship with JPH so as to be able to place more students there, and because they want to advertise at this hospital and throughout Illinois that COMHS is a good school to attend, especially if the student wants to return to Chicago—for clinical rotations, residency, and practice—and that scholarships, such as the one they gave me for half-tuition, are available. And moving there for clinical rotations would have the added benefit of returning me to Lovely Illinois, which is where I ultimately would like to live. I could vote without using the awkward absentee voting methods! I could retrieve my car, which is sitting in my brother's garage in Springfield, and use it! (I have no car here. I don't need one. But it sure will be nice to have a car again!) He'd be delighted if I got it out of there! O, Joy! Rapture!

JPH is also about 1 mile south of the University of Chicago. If I wind up going to JPH, I am hoping to live in the U of C neighborhood and walk or bus to and from the hospital. I would enjoy living in a university community again.

COMHS has clinical relationships with other hospitals, too, including one in Atlanta, Georgia, where I would enjoy going, and in Olympia, Washington, where I would greatly enjoy going because I am so fond of the Pacific Northwest, having traveled to Seattle and its environs many times, and having enjoyed the experience. But I shall go where I am needed, where I can get the education I need to become a good physician, and if I have to go to Chicago, I shall. And even if I do have to do my core rotations at JPH in Chicago, it is likely that I might be able to do at least some of my electives at other locations where I have friends and such. But even if I have to go to Chicago and do all of my rotations there, I shall. I'm moving the darned rubber tree plant, and ain't nuthin' and ain't nobody gonna stop me.