when say you are on surgery rotation, who is in your group? I mean who does the rounding, surgeries with you. Are there more 3rd years with you and the higher ups or is it like one-3rd yr per team? If so how does everyone fit around the surgery table?
It all depends on the service and how busy it is. The basic pattern will be will be an attending, an upper level resident, intern(s), and a student(s) . . . for instance if you're the student and you're doing something laid back like renal you could have the bare minimum attending, resident or intern and student (you). Some very busy surgery services could have you rounding with the Attening, (maybe a fellow), Chief (PGY5 or PGY4 usually), an upper level (PGY3 or PGY2), two-three interns, a SubI, and two-three M3s.
It all depends in the OR too. The number of people in the OR tends to be predicated on how interesting/rare the case is - dibs on cases is by seniority. But you can usually scrub in and watch even if you're not actively involved. For simple stuff like hernia repairs it will probably be the attending, the intern (if his floor work is done), and you - you'll get to close the skin on these if they like you. Something cool like a whipple, you'll be lucky if you can even look in the laporotomy, as you retract from around the mess of people who are around the table checking out the action.
EDIT: surgery also tends to have more of a hierarchy, as the student talk to the intern first. Don't bother a Chief in the OR about a low K for instance, talk to your intern. If your intern is scrubbed into a case, he may ask you to look for someone higher up the food chain who is not in the OR.
On medicine, if you see a lab value that bothers you, you can easilly tell anyone on the team.
