It seems that the aims of the Third Year rotations are, in general, structured to teach you about more than clinical practice;

In Internal Medicine, we learned that medicine is hard work. We learned that there is a lot to know. That you need structure. That someone will always know more than you. That everyone has a story, and what's important to them, isn't always important to you as a treating clinician. Medicine teaches you that you can't ever know everything, but if you approach it in a systematic and thorough way, you'll pick up on most problems. And the more you know, the more likely you are to be a keen diagnostician. There is always more to know.

Rural Medicine is about dealing with isolation. Medicine is isolating by it's nature. Most people attempt to maintain 'N-Mends' (non-med friends), but as Med school heats up it's more challenging to make time. Rural medicine places you away from friends, away from peers, and in many cases, in a situation where it's challenging to make new friends. Sure, you integrate into a town by virtue of your role, but, at some point, you need to be able to relax. To take off the 'Doctor Hat', and just be. Rural medicine, I think, teaches you that you never stop being a doctor. To live with yourself. Just yourself. To cultivate and value relationships without face-to-face contact. To learn how to spend time alone, whether in the middle of the bush, or in the middle of the city, and how to truly reach out.

Psychiatry is about seeing the really intense, crazy stuff, and learning how to deal with it. Big, shocking events in other people's live that, if you were them, could shake you to your core. It teaches you how to raise your measure of 'crazy', so that you can survive a night in Emergency Medicine during Fourth year as well as the rest of your career.

Surgery teaches you that it's a boy's club. Medicine is an old-school profession, and, in many places, it's the hoops you jump through and the slurping you do that helps you climb the tree. It teaches you that no one ever knows enough anatomy. And that, if you let it, medicine can consume every waking hour of your life. Or, more positively, that good, diligent, hard work will make you better at your job. Especially if you do it for long, long hours.

General Practice teaches you to be a conductor. That to micromanage all your patients leads to poor health outcomes. It teaches you that you need to know when to ask, and that really, your number one dialogue will always be with the patient. It teaches you that medicine is a business, and no matter what the idealistic medical school teaches you, it's impossible to offer perfect, flawless patient care to a bazillion patients a day and still make both a living and have a life. It teaches you that to truly care for complex patients, a symphony will be far more successful than a one-man band.