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Program: University of New Mexico
Rotation: EM Sub-I
SLOE Experience: Sent in timely manner
Didactics: Student lectures on Monday and Wednesday mornings, usually only 2-3 hours. Fantastic lectures, though. The attendings that do them put a lot of effort into making sure we are learning stuff that is applicable to our level of training. Conference on Wednesday afternoons, not required but 'recommended'. Conference was nothing ground-breaking. Sim labs were cool.
Faculty/Residents: The course director was nice, easy to talk to. I only really saw her two times over the course of the rotation. She did set aside some time to sit down with us at the end of the rotation to get feedback/advise us. I really enjoyed the faculty here. They treated us like interns and expected us to be completely responsible for our patients. You don't ever present to the residents. You pick up a patient, go see them/create your plan and then present to the attending and tell them what orders you want. You write your own notes and are responsible for admits/consults/discharges. You truly work as another intern. The only issue I had with the faculty here is it was extremely hard to get them to submit evaluations after shifts. I probably sent out around 25 evaluation requests and only got back like 11-12 by the end of the rotation, and the course director told me that I had more than average. Additionally, a lot of the evaluations I got back had no comments that could be put in my SLOE, only 3s/4s/5s, so the evals weren't tremendously helpful. The residents were just there. There wasn't much interaction with them due to you not ever presenting to them, they were there to help if we needed an order put in and the attending was MIA, though.
Shifts: 14 8 hour shifts plus an additional educational activity. You got to choose from EMS, ultrasound, CC, toxicology, etc. for your educational activity. A lot of us did ultrasound because some of the others never responded to emails. NO TEST AT THE END OF THE ROTATION. So you didn't have to study at all when you weren't on shift, left a lot of free time.
Logistics: Application through VSAS. You have to submit an essay as to why you want to rotate there, put effort into it because it's how they pick their rotators. I stayed on a place I found on rotating room. I was the only one who did this, don't know how other people found places.
Evaluation: I think it was a departmental SLOE. You seen online evaluations after each shifts to attendings/upper level attendings. You don't have to send them to everyone so you can pick or choose, but all of the attendings were great so I sent them to everyone. Only issue was them not filling them out. I never saw my SLOE, but they sent me an evaluation after the rotation that said I honored, again, no other real comments. I literally have no idea what my SLOE says.
Overall: I enjoyed my time here. The attendings are all fantastic, the PD is one of my favorite ones I've met, and the city is a great place to be. There is fantastic biking/hiking right next to the city and the city is full of fantastic food. The program definitely attracts a certain type of outdoorsy person as this was evident in the faculty, residents, and rotators. The only thing I would improve is the issue with getting those online evaluations filled out.