How bad is this comment on an evaluation and will it ruin me from matching into anything?

[BrainyBaby111]

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[lanzhou_lamian]

Do all comments from evals get put into your MSPE? I’d look into how your MSPE is constructed and see if this comment can be removed at that stage. If this is a one-off incident and not consistent with the rest of your evals, I could see your deans office not including it. That’s how it works at my school.

If all eval comments are put into your MSPE, or you think the comment is unfair or not indicative of your actual performance, you could talk to your clerkship director to see if the eval could be reviewed/removed.

Regardless, it’s not ideal, but a single comment from one person isn’t going to stop you from matching. Just make sure it doesn’t become a pattern.

 

[wysdoc]

It could be as simple as having an evaluator who was a pretty formal person and maybe you called him "bro" or dude" in conversation.
Would you ever talk with them and ask what they meant so you could improve? If you decided to do this it wouldn't be to try to get the evaluation changed, but to see if you come across some kind of way to teachers that you don't realize.

 

[mistafab]

A single comment wont sink you.

I would look internally and reflect why someone has said this about you. That's the best thing you can do at this point for your career.

 

[lanzhou_lamian]

All comments are put in and nothing is edited. Could I ask the future rotations to comment about my professionalism and then have a bunch of evaluations that say I am professional vs this one incident which I believe to be an unfair evaluation that says I need to work on it? How would it look if all my other evaluations have a sentence that comments on my professionalism (assuming they are all good)?

I wouldn't do that. I don't think evaluators would respond well to you trying to influence what they put in their evals. I'd just put this behind you and focus on presenting yourself as best as you can so you can get the best evals possible organically.

 

[lanzhou_lamian]

Nope, never saw my evaluator

If you literally never worked with this person, then I would talk to your clerkship director about having the comment removed.

 

[wysdoc]

Nope, never saw my evaluator, I was with other doctors who loved me the entire time. I was definitely not expecting this. What happens if I ask my future evaluators to comment on my professionalism and they all say I was professional, how will this one evaluation look?

It’s one comment of many, try not to over-react

 

[wysdoc]

I agree, I do not want to over react, that's why I am asking to see what others think and make sure my judgment is not irrational. Do you think it would look bad if after every rotation from now on I ask the preceptor to comment on my professionalism?

I don’t recommend that.
Maybe just remind yourself that the way we address and chat with our friends goes by a different code than the way we communicate with professors.

 

[lanzhou_lamian]

Do you think it would look bad if after every rotation from now on I ask the preceptor to comment on my professionalism?

Yes, it would look bad.

Don't tell residents and attendings how to write their evals. I would think it's weird if a med student I'm precepting did this and would probably be curious why they're asking, which now is bringing more attention to your past professionalism issue that I otherwise would have never known about.

Just present yourself in such a way that it's easy for them to write nice things about you from now on.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Nope, never saw my evaluator, I was with other doctors who loved me the entire time. I was definitely not expecting this. What happens if I ask my future evaluators to comment on my professionalism and they all say I was professional, how will this one evaluation look?

I also generally feel that negative comments should be a trigger for introspection. However, if you LITERALLY never met with the evaluator and they have no basis for this for this feedback, then I really might bring this up with the clerkship and ask them to remove the comment. It may be that they were incorrectly assigned to evaluate you, and that feedback was for another student.

 

[mrbreakfast]

This is a pretty unusual comment and suggests something went very wrong. If you never saw you evaluator, that likely means this comment was gleaned from feedback that person got from people who did work with you.

I wouldn't get too worried about this single comment; what I would worry about for you is further issues regarding this. The reason 90%+ of med student evaluations are bland is because most medical students perform generally the same, so if someone felt strongly enough about you to put this as formal feedback, I think you should treat it as genuine and reflect on things.

In my experience, the people who have the biggest issues with professionalism, issues that come up again and again, are the people who never see what's wrong with what they did (even when explained to them) and are always completely blindsided when confronted about each case. I'm not saying this is necessarily you, by any means. But I would potentially re-evaluate how you approach things/conduct yourself. The "other doctors who loved you" may have just been tactful. Play it safe and focus on being as polite as possible going forward.

And no, don't ask people to comment on your professionalism. That's a weird request, and professionalism is like attendance; it's not something you can do a "good job" on, 100% is the baseline expectation.

 

[lanzhou_lamian]

if you LITERALLY never met with the evaluator and they have no basis for this for this feedback, then I really might bring this up with the clerkship and ask them to remove the comment.

Yea, if you had literally zero contact with this evaluator, it seems pretty obvious that your course of action should be to talk to the clerkship director and have the comment removed. Not only that, the evaluator themself would support having the comment removed, because, again, if they've never met you, they'd realize this whole thing was just a mistake and the eval went to the wrong person. If there's some reason why you believe the evaluator wouldn't react that way, then I find it hard to believe you had zero interaction with them.

 

[thumbz]

If you truly never worked with this evaluator then I would question if they have you confused with another student - so as above I would reach out to your school with a request to have this comment reviewed. If you truly never worked with this person then it should be an easy decision. And if they're aggregating data from multiple attendings and you did in fact rub someone the wrong way, well then it'll stick around.

I interview residents, don't worry I see comments like this more than I thought I would. I ask about it in interviews. I know some (most) surgeons are insane - just explain it as "I never worked with the attending who made that comment, and have no idea why they left it or if it was meant for a different student." If I was interviewing you that would be the end of it for me - I'm not the type of person who would have reached out to my school to have it removed so I would expect you didn't bother either. Obviously if you come to find out this comment was truly meant for you, well then find a different means to explain it. (Personally, if I were in your shoes, I would forget about this and just move on)

As a resident I got an eval from an attending who was upset how I worded a message to him as a patient's PCP - I was holding someone's warfarin on discharge and sent a message letting him know. He felt my tone was unprofessional and questioned his medical judgement - my PD looked at the message center message in question, laughed out loud and said "medicine attracts all sorts of nuts"

 

[mrbreakfast]

Just as a final note, pretty much every physician will get some sort of complaint about their behavior at one point or another. 95-99% of the time it is completely unfounded. At my program we half-joke that if you've never gotten a single complaint, you aren't advocating firmly enough for your patients. An incident won't impact your training; just don't make a habit of it and you'll be fine.

 

[Billiam95]

Thank you everyone. I am just going to take time to reflect and move on, I will try to arrange a meeting with the school but low chances it will be removed. Best I just move on and hope it stays as the only negative comment and ill let residencies judge for themselves if it is a lie or if I am full of hot air and have underlying issues. I think that's the only way to go.

Some schools will let you strike one or two comments from the MSPE prior to submission. Used my strike on an eval saying I was interested in a different specialty than I was applying. Dean used a strike of her own on an eval from a resident who leaves uniformly negative evals for all students ("I know who wrote this, you don't even have to tell me who it was. I'll take it off"). Hopefully you'll have the same option.

 

[mrbreakfast]

Some schools will let you strike one or two comments from the MSPE prior to submission.

People keep bringing this up. While I understand every program is different, and that some residents get comments stricken (we had the same "well-known problem resident" when I was a med student), I feel pretty confident that few/no programs are going to strike a comment from an attending, let alone what seems to be the primary preceptor, just because it is unfavorable to the student.

If you have two conflicting comments from the same preceptor, as OP seems to say(?), then perhaps it might be reasonable to reach out to that person to see if they are willing to amend one of them.