can you do clinical rotations for uwi med school in the us?

is a Google search that gets people here. (Also ‘Romain Virgo pictures’ and ‘Junior Residency UHWI’. Really, junior residency? Impressive). Out of gratitude for the spike in site visits I’ve had this week from people searching for information about medical school at U.W.I Mona, I’m going to give an answer. (Whether or not this results in me getting even more site visits is totally irrelevant).

Short Answer: Yes.

You spend your first clinical year, third year, doing junior clinical rotations at UWI Mona teaching hospitals. In the fourth year of the MBBS programme – your second clinical year – you start rotating through a variety of medical specialities. During this time, you also have a three-five week elective block which can be completed at any teaching hospital of your choice. Travel expenses/visa not included. Boo, UWI.

In addition, students from the Bahamas also have the option of returning home after completing their Pathology/Microbiology rotation to do all the other rotations. I am pretty sure this applies to any country, as long as the rotations are offered at a teaching hospital and the curriculum is similar to UWI’s.

Fourth year rotations:

• Emergency Medicine; Radiology; Medicine and the Humanities (Ethics in Medicine; History of Medicine)
• Community Health
• Elective
• Otolaryngology; Dermatology
• Pathology and Microbiology
• Obstetrics and Gynaecology; Psychiatry
• Anaesthesiology; Ophthalmology
• Orthopaedics

Most foreign students are given preference to register for Path and MicroB as the first rotation of the year so it’s easier for them to spend the rest of the year abroad.

On a final note, these rotations are really great at facilitating clinical exposure as long as you’re not stationed at UHWI. Off-cite clinical experiences (at recognized teaching hospitals) will trump UHWI every time, but UHWI retains the academic edge. Perhaps UHWI consultants are better academicians that clinicians. The MBBS programme gives you a pretty good balance of academics and clinicals overall.

I am not the absolute authority.