Originally posted by juddson
tojwest,
Can you talk a little bit about the curiculum and the facilities. As I understand it, only the first year or so is spent on the main campus. Is this right? And then 2,3,and 4 years go to "community based clinics" to do rotations. What does that mean. Is a community based facility something like an urgent care clinic, or are rotations at the area hospitals like Miami Valley, Kettering, Daytin Childrens, etc.
Also, in terms of what one wants to practice, you don't think I should be bashful at all about wanting to do something hospital based (like EM or anestheasia). Both of which are kinda internal medicine, but do not consist of a private practice in the suburbs (which I guess is what the school ends up sending a lot of thier people in to.).
Give us the run-down please.
Judd
At Wright, we spend the first two years on campus like most schools, but unlike some of the others, we don't take several courses simultaneously, each with their own set of exams. We take one big course each quarter and have two big midterms and a final for it. In Anatomy, tests are about 4 hours long and they are cumulative which may seem torturous, but I think it's good preparation for the boards. This course ends this week (mid October) and then we're on to a course that combines biochem and cell biology. The upside of this is that you can stay focused on a single subject without the distraction of juggling other classes. The downside is that it moves really quickly and if you fall behind or get sick, it's almost impossible to catch up.
Some of our lectures are on-line which is great because you can watch them at school or at home in your underwear while eating a box of donuts (hypthetical of course). At first I thought it was a cop out, but now I really like it because I can pause them any time to go to digest the material or consult other resources. I can also replay parts if I need to. There are Q&A sessions with the professors where we're able discuss the material. There are also team learning sessions with the professors where we take quizes and work on case studies in groups of 5 or 6 students.
Regarding the facilities, the buildings on campus were built in the 70s and aren't particularly fancy, but they function perfectly well. We don't have a hospital on campus, but I fail to see what the benefit of a hospital would be if you're not spending time during the first two years in the wards. It would only make parking harder and more expensive (at Wright it's $70/year for parking in a lot that is 50 yards from the main classroom). In fact, I see a tremendous benefit to having access to a variety of hospitals and clinics. During 3rd & 4th year, we'll have the opportunity to do rural work with country docs and trauma work at Miami Valley which I've been told has the 2nd busiest ER in the midwest behind one in inner-city Detroit. We do rotations in family clinics located in strip malls and we also have a couple of nice suburban hospitals where we'll get to see how the rich people get treated. If you want to see a list of our affiliates they're listed on the Wright web site, although you won't find all of the little clinics.
During the first two years you can do clinical electives and they also have the free clinic called Reachout where you can do as much with the patients as you've been trained to do. It's a great experience and the doctors and staff who volunteer there are first class. I've volunteered once and they had me doing the initial interviews with the patients. It's something you can do in the first week of class if you want to. I loved every minute of it, but felt myself becoming a democrat, so I'll probably want to limit the number of times that I go back
Regarding speciaties, I looked at our match list for the last 5 years. We've averaged about 8 people matching in EM each year and we have a pretty active EM interest group. In 2002 there were 4 who matched in anaesthesia, but there were fewer in the previous 4 years. Not bad for a classes with only 90 people.
