Surgery

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

General Schedule: varies depending what team you are on, if you are at the VA, or at IMC. You usually get 1 weekend day off a week (THEY WILL TRY TO TAKE IT FROM YOU UNLESS YOU ARE FIRM ABOUT MAKING SURE YOU GET IT), and Wednesdays after rounding you go to surgery grand rounds at 7:30, and then have lectures until 5 pm. If you are at the U, you will have 4 call nights per rotation, but if you are at the VA or IMC, you are Q4 call. (don't expect to get off at noon when you are post call... "students don't have work hour limitations").

Resources for shelf exam (this shelf is about the medicine of caring for surgery patients, when you should take someone to the OR, the general procedure you want to do, post-op management, etc.... NOT the anatomy of the surgeries... and so much more that we don't know how to explain):
-Minimal for passing: 1. Either CaseFiles or PreTest, plus 2. Pestana or USMLE World
-To do well: (with the caviat that I don't yet know if I even passed) 1. CaseFiles 2. PreTest 3. Pestana notes 4. USMLE World 5. A good recollection of internal medicine

Resources for surviving day-to-day/ getting the eval.:
1. Surgical Recall- an excellent resource for pimping questions
2. Further Necessary reading- the day before your surgeries if you really want to do well, you need to do extra reading from another source.
-Emedicine
-MD Consult- go to Townsend: Sabiston textbook of surgery (you should have access to this at the U or at IMC, or through remote access to the U) I personally wish I had known this earlier because it is a free text, it gives good info, and at the end of the chapters it talks about the actually techniques used in the surgery. My resident said that the surgery boards reference this book.
-UpToDate
-other text options, Scaife will give you a list of them

This is a tough rotation. Some will love it, some will hate it, but good luck!