While going through my email I came across a message from the Ross Univeristy School Of Medicine, located in Dominica. This is NOT the med school I go to, so naturally, I was intrigued. Why were they emailing me? Well, lets find out.. click.
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| St. Joseph's Mercy |
It turns out it was a nice little fluff piece about how Ross has secured an two additional hospitals for their students to complete their clinical rotations (the 3rd and 4th year of medical school). One of the hospitals they listed seemed a bit familiar to me; St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan.
I went to the AUA website to confirm my suspicion; St. Joseph's Mercy is an AUA affiliated hospital! Are we going to be sharing it now? Well, no. Ross charges a higher tuition than AUA, and so they have more money to pay out to the hospitals for clinicals. So now AUA is out, and Ross is in. Thanks for sending me an email to rub it in.
I'm not terribly worried about it, after talking with some students I found out we only had a few seats at that hospital anyways. It just highlights the vast difference between Caribbean and American medical schools. Med schools in the states generally have very tight affiliations with their hospitals, and well structured clinical rotations for the third and fourth year students.
For Caribbean students, clinical rotations are a lot more like boarding a Southwest Airlines flight, there's no guarantee other than you will 'eventually' get there. So you stand around the gate waiting in breathless anticipation, and then when the lady on the intercom yells 'go', everyone bum rushes the plane, hoping to find a seat. Oh, and another similarity is that they overbook, so unless the right amount of people pull a "no-show", you could be waiting around a while for take off.
I've been told that AUA can get you through clinicals faster if you do well on your USMLE Step 1. So, I guess I better quit fooling around on the interwebs and get back to work.
