Worst thing you've seen a medstudent do

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What's with the kissing up to med students attitude in a thread where we're trying to tell funny stories? It's like a total non-sequitar.

Because the kissing up to students is just a ruse - the real intention is to flame an EM thread.

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To the med students out there: generally when you switch shifts with someone you also have to let the clerkship director know first.
 
Fine, I'll bite. Not the dumbest thing possible, but I've foley cathed a vagina before . . .

Asked the nurse why urine wasn't coming out . . .

Hey, at least it wasn't the anus . . . Just saying.

I could have sworn it was the urethra :D Good thing it was in the OR.
 
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Fine, I'll bite. Not the dumbest thing possible, but I've foley cathed a vagina before . . .

Asked the nurse why urine wasn't coming out . . .

Hey, at least it wasn't the anus . . . Just saying.

I could have sworn it was the urethra :D Good thing it was in the OR.

Was it because the urethra was not visible? I've had to do speculum assisted folies because the urethra is in the area where you would expect the cervix (older/bigger patients usually).
 
Was it because the urethra was not visible? I've had to do speculum assisted folies because the urethra is in the area where you would expect the cervix (older/bigger patients usually).

Spot on . . . It was my first one and the nurses thought it would be funny for me to try it on a nice lady w/ a bmi of around 40. We all got a nice laugh at the end.
 
Fine, I'll bite. Not the dumbest thing possible, but I've foley cathed a vagina before . . .

Well, I once, as a PGY3!, placed my index finger in an 84yo vagina after explaining I needed to get a stool sample to look for blood.

Just as I realized it, she notified me in a flat voice: "There's no stool in there."

:confused: :idea: :idea: :eek: :scared: :thumbdown: :laugh:(for the chaperone)

HH
 
I committed a huge foul intern year when I asked some dude, " who'd you bring with you, your mom?"

It was his girlfriend.

There is no coming back from that one. One of the most socially awkward moments of my life... I don't know what was wrong with me to make that seem like a good idea- there is no prize for guessing the correct relationship to the patient.

To add to the foley story- when I was a second year resident on trauma the intern went to put a foley in and got vagina instead. She asked me to come over bc she had fed it pretty far and got no urine. I told her she was in the wrong area, so she removes it (cottage cheese covered) and then went to retry for the urethra. Horrified, I said, "um...you're gonna need to start over." ... Then I remembered asking that one guy if his girlfriend was his mom and stopped judging.

More if I think of any
 
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What's with the kissing up to med students attitude in a thread where we're trying to tell funny stories? It's like a total non-sequitar.

Trolls notwithstanding, the thread comes across as residents/attendings asserting intellectual superiority over medical students. Yes, there are some stories of egregious behavior here, but there are also a lot of examples of students' ignorance and inexperience (foley in vagina, communication breakdown, incomplete H&P). The latter examples kinda come off as petty criticisms in a thread entitled "worst thing you've seen a med student do."
 
Fell asleep doing the H&P..... sitting in the beside chair with his head laying on the bed

The patient didn't notice anything amiss because the patient was sleeping off a 4 day bender.
 
Trolls notwithstanding, the thread comes across as residents/attendings asserting intellectual superiority over medical students. Yes, there are some stories of egregious behavior here, but there are also a lot of examples of students' ignorance and inexperience (foley in vagina, communication breakdown, incomplete H&P). The latter examples kinda come off as petty criticisms in a thread entitled "worst thing you've seen a med student do."

Disagree. I really am sorry you took anything other than a chuckle away from this thread. Unfortunately, you are not alone- as indicated by some earlier posts.

Gosh this thread is sad. I was enjoying reading some fun stories and remembering a few of my own. Even brought it up at work and shared a few laughs about the boy scout rectal, the rectal to tamponade a GI bleed and my own stupid girlfriend/mom confusion.

What's really REALLY getting old is that every few posts someone is complaining about this or that aspect of the thread, and then it gets off topic. Additionally, as people post negative comments, others are hesitant to post their own funny stories because they're afraid someone will flame them. This happens on most fun threads on here and is the reason I lurked so long before posting.

Just my opinion. I read threads like this for a laugh and nothing more, but I'm pretty laid back. A lot of the stuff on here could have happened to anyone.
 
Fell asleep doing the H&P..... sitting in the beside chair with his head laying on the bed

The patient didn't notice anything amiss because the patient was sleeping off a 4 day bender.

My neighbor in med school fell asleep in a pts room on our 3rd yr surgery rotation. It was a sweet older lady who felt bad that he was so tired, so she just let him sleep.
 
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Keep in mind that this student just got back from involuntary psych related year off school:

Freaks out about an O2 sat dropping to 72 during intubation, shouts at resident to "work faster, he's dying." Advises patient after extubation of their right to sue, gets overheard and is reprimanded by the attending. Threatens the attending with sexual harassment for staring at her chest all month if this causes her to not get Honors.

Classy


Got a notification someone had liked this post, had 100% forgotten about this till just now.

Would you believe she went on to residency still in anesthesia? And even better, tried shutting down that residency for alleged work hour violations till they checked her electronic badge-in times and called her out for lying and being wrong?
 
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Got a notification someone had liked this post, had 100% forgotten about this till just now.

Would you believe she went on to residency still in anesthesia? And even better, tried shutting down that residency for alleged work hour violations till they checked her electronic badge-in times and called her out for lying and being wrong?
Never underestimate the power (or unfortunately, persistence) of ineffective coping mechanisms.
 
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An intern that I'm currently working with had an auditioning EM student say to her "No offense, but there is really nothing that I can learn from an intern."

He went on their DNR applicant list realllll fast.
 
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We had a student on IM who would look up obscure facts on his phone then interrupt rounds to pimp the other med students in front of the team.

As for myself - during our first DRE skills session (we use paid volunteers) I flicked used surgi-lube into the hair of my already very squeamish female partner while trying to de-glove.
 
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Oh wow, this is a great thread idea.

Had one M3 student when I was a peds resident who, among other infractions, multiple times told patient families that the plan the attending laid out was incorrect and that he was going to put in new orders because he was "best friends" with the nurses. He would then argue with the attendings and would try to quote research studies from the 60s as evidence for his positions, refusing to accept any more recent or relevant studies that refuted his claims.

He really wanted to stay and match with our program and even though he interviewed at 10+ locations, elected to attempt a suicide match "because you guys are SO AWESOME", and of course had to scramble. Our program coordinator actually had to send out an email telling us residents to stop sending in negative feedback about him and assuring us that he would not be included on the match list.
 
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Lie. Just don't lie. If you don't know how to do the procedure, don't say you do. Ick.
 
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We had a student show up to work in the ED when I was a resident wearing scrub bottoms and a tshirt with a sexually explicit saying on it. He was working with the PD that day, who promptly threw him out of the ED and told him never to come back.
 
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I'm only a medical student but I had this funny experience with a M4 sub-I on my medicine rotation. We were both taking care of a 19 yo man that was admitted for hematemesis after an episode of binge drinking. Our attending wanted us to to a rectal exam for a FOBT so the M4, a kind of socially strange kid, offered to do the rectal. We both go into the room together and tell the college kid that we need to do a rectal after which he obviously didn't seem too happy about.... Then the M4 goes to grab the gloves in the room and says out loud in front of the patient "Damn, they only have medium gloves, I need some large or extra-large gloves. Hold on, I'll be right back." I was busting up laughing inside because I could see the terror on the patients face...I sometimes wonder if med school needs a screen test for social skills...

Funniest thing is that there is zero need for a DRE in this pt.

Oops. Didn’t realize how old.
 
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My class had some real doozies:

OMS-4 on Neurology audition: tells Cardiology attending with his team "you'll have to come back, I'm not done yet" when they came to see the patient he was evaluating

OMS-4, 2X retread, believed that God told him he would win multiple Olympic Track and Field events, decided EM was his career LATE in 3rd year. Actually lands an audition at a good program. He promptly walks in, sits at the mid/fast-track doc's computer, throws his feet up on the counter, puts his headphones on and begins air-drumming (which is what he used to do in class), had to be prompted to actually see patients throughout the entire month. And the best one: asks an intern out, who promptly tells him no and she's an intern. His reply: "so, what"
 
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Oh, if we're going to talk about classmates...

Guy a year ahead of me, comes into med school convinced that becoming a trauma surgeon is his one true path, and as an M2 steals a trauma pager and begins to show up to all paged out traumas at any time of day or night, including when he's in class or with his pre-clinical preceptors. When people finally realize what he's doing and how he got the pager, they assume that if they just take the trauma pager away from him, he'll stop showing up. Wrong. He buys his own pager, and convinces the Trauma administrative assistant to add it to the trauma pager list and keep showing up to get in the way. Then on his third year surgical clerkship frequently would tell attendings they were doing procedures incorrectly because he watched a bunch of surgical videos online the night before and that's not how they did them.
 
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Oh, if we're going to talk about classmates...

Guy a year ahead of me, comes into med school convinced that becoming a trauma surgeon is his one true path, and as an M2 steals a trauma pager and begins to show up to all paged out traumas at any time of day or night, including when he's in class or with his pre-clinical preceptors. When people finally realize what he's doing and how he got the pager, they assume that if they just take the trauma pager away from him, he'll stop showing up. Wrong. He buys his own pager, and convinces the Trauma administrative assistant to add it to the trauma pager list and keep showing up to get in the way. Then on his third year surgical clerkship frequently would tell attendings they were doing procedures incorrectly because he watched a bunch of surgical videos online the night before and that's not how they did them.

This is why standardized test scores can't be the "be all and end all" of candidate evaluation. There are just so many people out there that either don't have the innate people skills to not annoy everyone in the room at best, and at worst are completely toxic individuals. I honestly don't understand the psyche of crazy gunners like this, and how they actually think they are helping themselves.

I see more and more "over-eager" and "over bearing" comments on SLOEs every year. Some gunners just cant help shooting themselves in the foot.
 
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My Med students are generally conservative, helpful. I won’t bash them, but instead focus on my shortcomings.

Did an elaborate renal / cardio workup on an inpatient with crazy fluid balance. Like 5 L out every day, 800 charted input. No diuretic. Presented him to team. Full cystatin, retro US, urine lytes, AM cortisol. PT kindly asks if I noticed that patient has Keurig in room, doing ~32 cups coffee / day.

Intern year, patient left with IV in wrist.

Accidentally sent tetraplegic out with complex sliding scale insulin plan. Had to call and make nice once daily plan.

Yeasty discharge on younger patient who’d been hospitalized for months. Didn’t respond to antifungals. Ultimately had STI, I’d naively thought they weren’t engaging in romance while in hospital. Pharm saved my back by proposing Neisseria PCR.
 
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One of my colleagues managed to break a mannequin pelvis while trying to do a speculum exam on it.

Another dropped a baby she just delivered - now an obstetrician.
 
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The worst thing I ever saw a med student do?

Pick his nose and eat it.
 
Oh, if we're going to talk about classmates...

Guy a year ahead of me, comes into med school convinced that becoming a trauma surgeon is his one true path, and as an M2 steals a trauma pager and begins to show up to all paged out traumas at any time of day or night, including when he's in class or with his pre-clinical preceptors. When people finally realize what he's doing and how he got the pager, they assume that if they just take the trauma pager away from him, he'll stop showing up. Wrong. He buys his own pager, and convinces the Trauma administrative assistant to add it to the trauma pager list and keep showing up to get in the way. Then on his third year surgical clerkship frequently would tell attendings they were doing procedures incorrectly because he watched a bunch of surgical videos online the night before and that's not how they did them.
Sounds like he would make a great surgeon.
 
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Oh wow, this is a great thread idea.

Had one M3 student when I was a peds resident who, among other infractions, multiple times told patient families that the plan the attending laid out was incorrect and that he was going to put in new orders because he was "best friends" with the nurses. He would then argue with the attendings and would try to quote research studies from the 60s as evidence for his positions, refusing to accept any more recent or relevant studies that refuted his claims.

He really wanted to stay and match with our program and even though he interviewed at 10+ locations, elected to attempt a suicide match "because you guys are SO AWESOME", and of course had to scramble. Our program coordinator actually had to send out an email telling us residents to stop sending in negative feedback about him and assuring us that he would not be included on the match list.
Sadly, I've had a student like this. Managed to get himself kicked out of a rotation. 100% clueless and no filter between mouth and brain.
 
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