Make the most out of your Electives!

Make the most of out of your electives! What do I mean by this! Obviously you should try to get a good LOR and Evaluation Form signed but you can do a lot more than that in your electives.

• First of all you can get your electives experience published in few well-reputed journals like British Medical Journal(BMJ) and The Lancet; it counts a full publication.
  • For Student- BMJ, visit the following link for further details
    • US Elective Reports
    • International Elective Reports
    • Write an Elective Report
  • Have a look at what The Lancet Student says about such elective reports
    Elective Reports
    As most medical students go on an Elective at some point, it may be easiest to start off with an Elective report. We want this section to be a useful resource to all students. Therefore, as you all have very different experiences of your electives, we have decided to make this an "anything goes" section so elective reports can now be as long or as short as you like (within reason), remain unedited (unless for typos or MASSIVELY long etc), and will no longer be peer reviewed by our student reviewers. It is your chance to write an honest, personal, and informative account of your elective and to show off some of your photos. So in addition to details of where you went and what you did, witnessed, and experienced etc, please include some useful information for others. All elective reports must also include a short paragraph about what you learned from your experience. Although not imperative, we strongly encourage you to submit photos with your reports (as separate attachments NOT embedded please!). Please note that if any photos are of patients, you will need to provide us with some evidence of their consent.
  • Visit the following links for Lancet
    • Elective Reports
    • Write for The Lancet Student
• Secondly, depending upon the total working hours and no. of days of your electives, it is strongly advised to volunteer yourself in evenings/ other free time in various research labs of faculty members in the specialty of your choice(even if you are not doing electives there). You would establish good contacts this way and might be able to help you secure a spot for research or even residency later on. Moreover if you did work on a research project and can get it published, it goes a long way. Although everyone says it is very very difficult to do research during electives and to get it published but its not impossible. I know a few people who did this. Always try to achieve whatever you can.... aim for the moon and conquer the world, if not moon... there is no harm in being ambitious!
• If there is no research spot available, you can try voluntarily shadowing(observership) in the specialty of your choice in your free time. Again you would establish good contacts this way which help you secure a spot for research or even residency later on.
• But before everything, if your tough routine during electives do not allow to do some extra research/observership, its always better to concentrate on the elective you have got and give your best in it. A bird in hand is better than two in bush.
• The above mentioned two possibilities are only in that situation when you have less no. of days per week for electives or less working hours per day but keep one thing in mind, during electives the thing which is of prime importance is the electives itself and all the additional things can be icing on the cake but not the cake itself. Its always better to be practical rather than over-ambitious.