Thought for a Saturday morning

[jerseyjess]

So the other day I ran into one of my old residents in the gym...
Me: I'm going to be doing an away rotation in August. Any advice?
Resident: Yeah...don't forget to stay out of the way.
Me: Ummm...OK...is there anything else I should do?
Resident: Nah, as long as you stay the &*$% out of the way, you'll be fine. Just don't be annoying. I mean,

Comments

[imyourbob]

I'm only on my second rotation, but I have had two completely opposite experiences. I was on medicine first, and the students were a really integral part of the team. We had our own patients, that the residents never even saw except during rounds(unless we needed orders written, of course). The residents asked us for help. The attendings wanted to teach, all of us, not just the residents.

Now I'm on psych, and it is very much an exercise in learning how the heck to stay out of the way. There are no residents, and while the attending couldn't run his practice without the students doing most of his inpatient consults for him, he can't stand that we're there, and always wants us out of the way. It's pretty infuriating. Thank god I only have a week left.

[jerseyjess]

Wow, when I was on medicine we were supposed to preround but our notes didn't even go in the chart!

[imyourbob]

oh yeah. our notes were in the chart, and they also got sent to the billing person too! with attending notes too, of course.

I suppose it probably had something to do with the fact that our main preceptor is the medicine residency director. heh.

[lucide13]

Good advice for 3rd year. I am not so sure about an away rotation. The advice I heard from an attending who got into ENT at UW with subpar scores was "Never leave the hospital. Round on every patient before the residents even get up and go to any surgery you can. This was the only reason I got in."

Good luck on step 2. I will be taking it on Wednesday so I totally feel your pain right now. Back to USMLE World.

[jerseyjess]

good luck to you too! I'm also doing USMLEworld :-) Only about 300 questions left...

[jerseyjess]

Dunno, my school is at a pretty small hospital. When I was in hospitals without residents I usually got to do a lot though so I think there's some truth to your first statement.

[paraffinman]

I hate advice like this.

You stay out of the way: "Not a team player." "Doesn't care about his patients."

You try to be enthusiastic, interested, and learn whenever you can, then you are in the way and annoying. I once had "too high energy" written on an evaluation.

Moral of the story: unless you are one of the med students who can mysteriously read minds and somehow honos everything, the main guiding principle from this year is that, when it comes to residents, YOU ARE ALWAYS WRONG. Luckily you pretty much can't fail here as long as you pass the shelf. I don't know how it will be where you are, but at my school Sub-I's are pretty much entirely graded by attendings, so giving really good presentations and knowing a lot of stuff would probably be the way to go.

[lucide13]

Wow we are graded entirely differently our shelves are 20% of our grade and the evaluations are 60%. Which leads to more confusion for the attendings who look at the eval which is a 1-5 scale and say hmm he was slightly above average I will give him three 3s and three 4s for about a 3.5. Little do they know that the course directors have set a 3 (which is spelled out as average on the evaluation) as a 60% therefore you have to get at least this 3.5 to PASS. And we have grading criteria on the shelf too. If you don't beat X %ile for this class you cannot get an honors or a pass with commendation. Works out for great things in our combined Med/Peds or Neuro/Psyche rotations like having a sparkling evaluation (straight 5s) for the evaluations a 92% quiz score 94%ile for the Medicine shelf and 62%ile for the Peds shelf with a final average for the class of 94% and you get a Pass with Commendation. All because of 1 stupid test which you didn't fail or even get less than the average. To me that is Med_school_hell right there.

[jerseyjess]

Yeah, my school is more like that...40% of your grade is eval and 40% is shelf...evals are 1--5, 3 is "good" and if you get all 3's, you fail. Even all 4's isn't that great. As for our shelfs (shelves?) you need to get in the 88%ile to get honors, regardless of your raw score on the stupid exam. You just need in the 10%ile to pass, but i know people who have failed those stupid things.

[paraffinman]

Yeah, that's a lot like at our school for required clerkships. Only when the resident gives you straight 3's that's the bare minimum to pass. 4th year sub-I's are the ones that are all attending based.

[litlebanana]

Someone once told me they got a (complimentary) evaluation from a resident that said, "The med student was not annoying."