Blueprint Med School Blog (formerly Cram Fighter & Med School Tutors)

The blog for Blueprint Medical, supporting your MedEd journey with our exam study planner, tutoring, residency consulting, and advanced boards.

Day in the Life of a Transitional Year Resident

This post is from the perspective of my colleague, Elle S., MD, who completed a transitional year in 2021 and is now in her final year of PM&R residency. There comes a time in nearly all medical students’ careers when they open ERAS and try to figure out what they’re going to do for the

Sep 15, 2022

How to Introduce Yourself to Patients During Rotations

It’s your third year of medical school, and you are most excited to start rotations. Finally, Step 1 is behind you, the lectures and slides can take a back seat, and you can finally start seeing some patients. The light at the end of the medical school tunnel is beginning to materialize. You walk into

Sep 13, 2022

Day in the Life of a Medical Student: Elective Rotation

If you’ve made it to an outpatient clinic or elective rotation, that means you’ve probably completed a significant chunk of your inpatient core rotations. Congrats! Outpatient medicine and inpatient medicine can be a night and day difference. Generally, outpatient clinic and non-inpatient elective rotations have fewer hours when compared to inpatient rotations. However, they can

Sep 06, 2022

Five Tips for Sub-Internship Success

What is a sub-internship? Sub-internships (sub-Is), audition rotations, and acting internships (AIs) are common names for the same thing: a required clinical rotation completed during your last stretch of medical school. Though difficult, the seasoned medical student is expected to function at an intern level under the supervision of senior residents and attending physicians. Depending

Aug 25, 2022

How to Introduce Yourself to Physicians During Rotations

It’s 2 a.m., time to place another epidural. This is a day in the life of an anesthesiologist on call. I pull up a chair at the nearest computer and start to place orders. “Hi, I’m Steve. I’m the medical student on OB, but I’m really interested in anesthesia. Can I observe you place the

Aug 16, 2022

Day in the Life of a Medical Student: Surgery Rotation

Surgery is not for everybody. I can say with certainty that it wasn’t my favorite rotation. Our introduction to surgery was the surgical clerkship director stating that we should only “go into surgery only if you can’t see yourself doing absolutely anything else.” That was sound advice. Regardless of which field you enter, you must

Aug 11, 2022

Day in the Life of a Medical Student: Clinicals

Congratulations on making it to clinicals! It’s been a challenging road thus far. You’ve endured hours of lectures, anatomy labs, and the colossal hurdle of Step 1. Now, you have the opportunity to take everything you’ve learned over the past two years and apply it to “the real world,” so to speak. I remember the

Aug 09, 2022

Day in the Life of a Medical Student: Preclinicals

So, you’re starting medical school preclinicals. Those were the days! This is one of the periods of training that I look back upon fondly. On the long road of medical training, you rarely have the type of freedom you’ll find as a preclinical medical student. The sheer amount of independent study time and flexibility to

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