Pediatric Cardiology
(account deleted) 06 Nov 2008 21:00
Highly recommend this elective if you are interested in pediatrics and want a relaxed month.
Pros:
- Lots of face-time with friendly and well-trained attendings: Drs. Pieroni, Roland, Orie, Gingell, Leonard, Menon. They are open to questions and understanding if you need to take a day off to take your boards. This is an attending-run elective (in contrast to many other electives where you don't really spend much time with attendings and report to your resident/fellow).
- Really friendly echo and EKG techs and staff in general.
- See a lot of healthy, adorable children with a variety of congenital heart diseases (very interesting echos and EKG findings!). Auscultate many types of murmurs. Lots of syncope and "chest pain" (reassurance that it's a musculoskeltal pain) cases too.
- If you are interested, Dr. Leonard does interventional caths on Wednesdays at Gates Hospital and on Thursdays at Strong Memorial in Rochester.
- Dr. Orie does fetal echos a couple days per week.
- Dr. Pieroni does stress tests a couple days per week.
- Clinic hours for students/residents are different than hours for the attendings. Students/residents typically report 9-3:30pm, with 1-2 hour lunch break, except Friday you are excused at noon.
Cons:
- The role of students and residents are to shadow the attendings, but I saw it as a plus because I learned different history-taking styles. Except on a few occasions, students usually are not the primary person to take the history and formulate a differential. (which could be a pro for some people, I suppose).
