Sometimes away rotations are a chance to dip into the extraordinary. Unusual electives take students on ambulance rides, into autopsy suites, through the organ donation/retrieval process, behind the walls of prisons, or into a professional kitchen to study culinary medicine. Some students have even experienced a simulation of a severe plane crash, mimicking a rescue assignment typically taking 7 years, or learned space-related medicine through NASA. Such atypical opportunities can be found in the database run by the AAMC’s Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO), which 15,000 listings annually across hundreds of institutions. According to the programs director, such rotations offer experiences that students may never be able to replicate once they move into residency and their careers…read more in-depth descriptions from medical students in the full article.
