Background: The CORD Advising Students Committee in Emergency Medicine (ASC-EM) recommends EM-bound medical students complete two EM clerkship rotations. In recent years, the number of VSAS applications per applicant has increased, leading to increased demand for rotation slots. Objective: Determine how many EM rotations medical students are completing during their fourth year. We hypothesized that medical students are scheduling more than the recommended two rotations, and that DO students are completing more rotations than MD students.

1. How Many Emergency Medicine
Rotations Are Students Completing?
Chichen Qiu, MD
Stanford University
Department of Emergency Medicine
Erin Karl, MD
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Department of Emergency Medicine
Zach Jarou, MD
University of Chicago
Section of Emergency Medicine

2. Disclosures
• Erin Karl, MD
– No financial disclosures.
– Chapter author for the
EMRA and CORD Student
Advising Guide.
• Zach Jarou, MD
– No financial disclosures.
– Editor-in-Chief for the
EMRA and CORD Student
Advising Guide.
• Chichen Qiu, MD
– No disclosures.

3. Background
• The CORD Advising Students Committee in Emergency
Medicine (ASC-EM) recommends EM-bound medical
students complete two EM clerkship rotations.
• In recent years, the number of VSAS applications per
applicant has increased, leading to increased demand
for rotation slots.

4. Objective
• Determine how many EM rotations medical students are
completing during their fourth year.
• We hypothesized that medical students are scheduling
more than the recommended two rotations, and that DO
students are completing more rotations than MD
students.

5. Methods
• Fourth year medical students attending the EMRA
Medical Student Forum at the 2018 Scientific Assembly
were asked to complete a 24 question online survey.
• An observational, cross-sectional, convenience sample
of 132 students were invited to complete the survey, for
which there was an 80.2% response rate.
• Students who were IMGs, couples or military matching,
had not taken Step 1, or had not completed or received
their grade from at least one EM rotation were
excluded.
• Descriptive, summary statistics were calculated for all
questions (n=72).

6. Results
Figure 1. Number of EM rotations medical students have scheduled during their fourth year. (n=72).

7. Results
• Only 15% of allopathic students limited themselves to
two EM clerkships, compared to 0% of osteopathic
students.
• Mean number of EM rotations medical students
scheduled for their fourth year was 3.30.
– Mean for MD students was 2.93 (95% CI 2.75-3.11)
– Mean for DO students was 3.82 (95% CI 3.57-4.07)
• More than two-thirds (68%) of DO applicants scheduled
four or more rotations, compared to only 7% of MD
applicants.

8. Results
• There was no statistical difference in mean number
of clerkships scheduled when groups were broken
down by their self rating of competitiveness
(p=0.712), confidence in evaluating their self
competitiveness (p=0.553), or by step 1 score ranges
(p=0.728).
• Means were compared with t-test and one way ANOVA.

9. Conclusions
• Although CORD’s ASC-EM recommends that students
of average competitiveness complete only two EM
clerkships, the students in our sample scheduled
more than two, with DO applicants completing more
rotations compared to MD applicants.
• Further research is needed to describe the reasons
behind this difference and to globally reduce the
number of away rotations per student.