- Joined
- Nov 12, 2015
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- 29
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The following is a venting session, so read at your own risk! I’d appreciate any sincere advice or helpful responses, if you’d like to offer them.
What do you do when an attending you’ve never worked with before corrects what you say, but what you said is correct and what they’re telling you is wrong? I'm on an outpatient rotation and working with the same provider for only half-days at a time, so their first impressions and snap-judgments basically trump everything.
Today, I saw a patient with an erythematous, pruritic non-raised rash about the size of a quarter. I described it in my presentation as a “patch,” and my attending interrupted me during the presentation to say that it was a macule—“because it isn’t raised.” I told this person that a patch is not raised, actually—it’s just a larger macule greater than 1 cm—and a raised lesion of that size would be called a plaque. They said, “No, a patch is raised, but we can look it up later.” Needless to say, we never looked it up given they never brought it up again, and I didn’t want to risk coming off even worse as a “smart aleck” for looking up dermatological terms to show the attending I was right. It's lose-lose since this person basically holds your grade in their hands, and they don't want to hear they're wrong.
Later, this person interrupted me during another presentation to tell me to stop using the word “appreciate” during my presentation of a physical exam. I’ve never been told that before by anyone ever, but now all of a sudden I’m not allowed to use that word.
How do you deal with these situations? I will likely never work with this person again on this rotation, but this person could be influential in my grade given their status in the curriculum. I kind of already know what you might say, to just forget about it, but I wanted to vent regardless!
Thanks for putting up with it!
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Pearls I’ve learned so far in this third-year "game," albeit tongue-in-cheek:
- Have a thick skin
- Always smile, especially during feedback, always
- Know when to ask honest questions about what you don’t know
- Know when to ask questions about things you do know and would like to impress someone by your already knowing what you’re asking
- Know when to NOT ask honest questions about what you don’t know so that no one realizes that you don’t know something
- Never correct anyone ever
- Immediately adapt to every situation
- Pray your patient never contradicts anything you say during your presentation or when they are asked questions by the attending, despite your best efforts to nail down their HPI
- Buy eyeglasses even if you don't need them to make you look smarter
What do you do when an attending you’ve never worked with before corrects what you say, but what you said is correct and what they’re telling you is wrong? I'm on an outpatient rotation and working with the same provider for only half-days at a time, so their first impressions and snap-judgments basically trump everything.
Today, I saw a patient with an erythematous, pruritic non-raised rash about the size of a quarter. I described it in my presentation as a “patch,” and my attending interrupted me during the presentation to say that it was a macule—“because it isn’t raised.” I told this person that a patch is not raised, actually—it’s just a larger macule greater than 1 cm—and a raised lesion of that size would be called a plaque. They said, “No, a patch is raised, but we can look it up later.” Needless to say, we never looked it up given they never brought it up again, and I didn’t want to risk coming off even worse as a “smart aleck” for looking up dermatological terms to show the attending I was right. It's lose-lose since this person basically holds your grade in their hands, and they don't want to hear they're wrong.
Later, this person interrupted me during another presentation to tell me to stop using the word “appreciate” during my presentation of a physical exam. I’ve never been told that before by anyone ever, but now all of a sudden I’m not allowed to use that word.
How do you deal with these situations? I will likely never work with this person again on this rotation, but this person could be influential in my grade given their status in the curriculum. I kind of already know what you might say, to just forget about it, but I wanted to vent regardless!
Thanks for putting up with it!
---
Pearls I’ve learned so far in this third-year "game," albeit tongue-in-cheek:
- Have a thick skin
- Always smile, especially during feedback, always
- Know when to ask honest questions about what you don’t know
- Know when to ask questions about things you do know and would like to impress someone by your already knowing what you’re asking
- Know when to NOT ask honest questions about what you don’t know so that no one realizes that you don’t know something
- Never correct anyone ever
- Immediately adapt to every situation
- Pray your patient never contradicts anything you say during your presentation or when they are asked questions by the attending, despite your best efforts to nail down their HPI
- Buy eyeglasses even if you don't need them to make you look smarter
