Hello friends! It's been over 2 weeks since ending my Family Medicine Rotation and I wanted to share with you all my experience as well as some tips on the shelf exam. Our family medicine rotation lasts for 8 weeks and we take the shelf at the end of it. For osteopathic students, we take the DO-version of the shelf but I imagine it's pretty similar, except of course ours has the osteopathic aspect in it.

My experience in family medicine was really great! My days started around 5:30am and I would meet my preceptor by 6:30am to round then clinic started around 8am. Most days we end around 4-4:30pm, but Mondays tend to be our longest days, which ran until 7-7:30pm. What I liked the most about family medicine was seeing a variety of things. Yes, of course you have your typical diabetes and hypertension and managing them, but even that becomes varied because different people respond to different medications and you have to manage accordingly. We also went to the nursing home once a month and I thought that was a very unique experience. To be honest, it was a bit heart breaking to see some of the patients in there, but I know they're being taken care of. Lastly, I also loved the interactions I had with patients because they're basically coming to the family doctor so they can maintain health by prevention or treatment. And since my preceptor has been around the community for a while, they truly treat him like family.

In terms of the shelf exam, here are my tips:

Do a lot of questions. Whatever q-bank you're using, go through the questions and explanations in entirety. I'm still preaching to myself because it's easy to just gloss over it, but honestly a lot of information are within those explanations.
Case Files: Family Medicine. This was a great resource because it covered the bases. There were still a few things I had to look up, so I turned to Step-Up to Medicine but note that it doesn't have every topic that's covered in the FM shelf exam (such as Peds, OBGYN, etc).
Know the USPSTF A + B Recommendations!

I hope you all found this helpful and if you have any other questions, email me at lifeinthemedlane@gmail.com !

xo, Dorothy