"gap in knowledge"?

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bestcoast

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Is it normal for PGY1 still receiving evals with comments like "gap in knowledge"?
I did a month of Endo elective last month. At the beginning, I was with one attending and screwed up a little with the diabetic management. Basically, I just assumed that the patient's sugar was well controlled because his A1C was <6.5% and my plan was to "continue current med". But the attending explained to me that I can't just rely on simple lab values and needed to follow up with this daily sugar levels since we are doing Endo and not just IM or FM.
That was an excellent point. In the eval, he wrote things like, "still some gap in knowledge but he learns quickly. No concern". By the end of the rotation, I was managing every perfectly and the 2nd attending said I was very good.

Is that normal? I mean, I still feel like I ain't a good doctor at the beginning of every rotation...... It usually takes me a couple of days to get back on track and be productive.
This month I'm at the ED. Initially, it takes me about 45 min to see a patient, write notes, order stuff, make plans and staff with the attending. Now I'm on my 3rd day and I'm bringing the timing down to 20-30min. I still feel slow especially since I'm half-way through PGY1.....

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I would say evaluations are highly variable between attendings, and unfortunately there may be some "luck of the draw" aspect to it. As far as feeling green the first day of every rotation, this is normal especially during your first year. It sounds like you are getting into the swing of things relatively quickly, and I was often told by attendings the biggest thing is to show improvement as the rotation goes on, so I say keep up the good work and constantly try to improve.
 
You did have some gaps in knowledge, and you did learn quickly, and he says "no concern." I'm not sure why you're worried.
 
If you didn't have gaps in your knowledge, you wouldn't need residency.

Like the others have said, don't worry about it - what's important is that a problem was identified and you rectified it.
 
I would say that is not a bad evaluation. when someone says, "no concerns" at the end, they mean that they don't thing program director should be worried about you...
 
The only thing strange or concerning about this is that an attending would feel the need to state explicitly that an intern still had gaps in knowledge.

In other news, smoking is bad for you.
 
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