Why Consider a Transitional Year Program?
The expansion of medical knowledge, coupled with the commonly "all elective" senior year, has made it practically impossible for the modern medical school graduate to feel comfortable in the wide variety of clinical situations that he or she may later face.
Who benefits from a transitional year? There are three main groups of students seeking the transitional year educational experience:
- Students who remain uncertain about their ultimate career goal and want additional clinical experience in a number of fields in order to better decide their future.
- Students who seek residency training in a specialty requiring preliminary training of a general nature. Some students in this category may have a strong interest in a specialty that will, under certain circumstances, consider training taken in a transitional year program toward board certification requirements. These students may wish to design a year to satisfy those requirements while allowing latitude to sample other specialties of possible interest. These considerations relate particularly to students seeking eventual board certification in:
- anesthesiology
- dermatology
- family medicine
- internal medicine
- neurology
- ophthalmology
- pathology
- psychiatry
- physical medicine and rehabilitation
- radiology
- Students who have a commitment to the armed services or public health service and must plan to fulfill that commitment immediately after the first year of graduate training.