Neurological Care at The Children's Hospital

I got the e-mail today telling me that I will be doing my Neurological Care clerkship at The Children's Hospital. I have mixed feelings about this.

Four hospitals take students for neurology clerkship: The University Hospital, The Children's Hospital, the VA, and Denver Health. I ranked the VA first and TCH dead last.

This might not make sense at first if you know that I have been researching careers in pediatric neurology. My thought process was to gain a solid adult neurology foundation during my clerkship then do a pediatric neurology elective during my fourth year. That's obviously not going to happen now. Instead, I'll just do an adult neurology elective early in my fourth year.

So, while I'm somewhat disappointed that I didn't get my first choice of site, and while I had to shuffle around my plan for neurology, I'm still looking forward to working at TCH. It's one of the top pediatric hospitals in the country (20th in neurology), and I've heard only great things about the Neurological Care clerkship at TCH.

I talked with a classmate of mine who did his neurology clerkship at TCH, and he loved it. When I told him about my concerns of not gaining a basic foundation in adult neurology, he said that he felt he learned the neurological exam extra-well because he also had to learn all the little tricks of getting the kiddos to cooperate. Good point.

So overall I'm very excited. I think Neurological Care at TCH will be a great learning experience and a boat load of fun.