Advice needed on what I should do?

[aprilpremed]

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Hi everyone,

I need advice on what I should do about one of my clinical evaluations for my medicine rotation. I was on a service that was very busy with 4 attendings total. At the end, they had a meeting where they filled out my evaluation form together. The evaluation form has criteria such as physical examination skills, communication with patients, presenting information, fund of knowledge, etc. They can rate us "below expectations", "meeting expectations", "consistently exceeding expectations" and "outstanding." There is also a category called "not observed." The medicine department then looks at our ratings for each criteria and they have a point value system.

While most of my ratings were in the "consistently exceeds expectations" and "outstanding" ranges, they gave me "meets expectations" for areas such as physical exam skills and communication with patients. My problem with this is that I was never in a situation where an attending actually observed me performing a physical exam on a patient or communicating with them. The service was so busy that there was never any bedside teaching. My residents saw me with patients, but never the attendings. If they would have filled out "not observed," it would have done no damage.

In my school, we are graded with A, AB, B, etc. And it is basically a curve with each group of students, with only the top students getting As or ABs. The points are usually pretty tight. Out of 25 students in the rotation at a given time, 5 will get As, 5 ABs and the rest Bs. These "meets expectations" could very likely put me in the B range.

Would you bring this point up to the course administrator or just let it go? I should note that my time on this service contributes 15% to my total grade because I also spent time at other sites.

Thanks!

 

[the citizen]

I would let it go. The attendings easily could have asked the residents how you did.

 

[RustNeverSleeps]

I think it depends how much this means to you and how much trouble you are willing to make to get your way. Is this your only set of clinical evals? If not, maybe other ones will reflect your work more accurately. Another consideration: 15% is not very much of your grade. In addition, this disputed grade is only one component out of several that makes up the 15%. Therefore you probably wouldn't get more than a couple points even if you got your way, unless I am misinterpreting the situation. Since this is only going to get you a couple extra points, you need to weigh the benefit of the points (which could be significant, for instance if you were on the cusp between two grades) and the trouble you could cause by pursuing the situation (maybe nothing bad will happen, or maybe you will alienate attendings who would otherwise have written you a great recommendation). Good luck! 🙂

 

[doc05]

forget it. focus on the shelf exam - that's what really counts.

 

[ears]

Believe me, I appreciate your frustration; I won't relate my own tale of woe in this regard, but almost everyone I know in med school has at least one. Yours isn't particularly egregious, even (though I'm sure it smarts for you).

If your med school is anything like mine, you're unlikely to be able to do yourself any good by trying to go over the heads of the graders, and you could do yourself significant harm.

One thing I can think of to try is to go talk to one or more of the people who gave you the low grade, and ask them what specifically you should be working on in order to improve. Make sure you frame the conversation as wanting to improve yourself rather than improving your grade. Maybe one of them will realize they were kind of unfair, but that's pretty unlikely.

Sorry you ran afoul of the arbitrariness of medical school clinical evaluations. Good luck in your future rotations.

 

[debvz]

Was in a similar situation when one of my evaluators, who i'd never worked with, gave me 2/5's (equivalent to about 60%) in all categories, including physical exam skills, h&p's, etc.... he did the same to the other 2 ppl in my rotation group. The group of us approached the person in charge of the rotation, who said the problem would be taken care of....in short, the disputed evals stayed in our grades -- but i still pulled off an A.

With your eval only being worth 15% of your grade, i'd probably not bother with dealing w/ the powers that be. Check with other ppl you rotated with and see if they were similarly graded -- if they were, and you are graded on par with the rest of your group, then the lousy eval essentially is negated. It stinks to not get the credit you deserve, but just focus on the rest of the rotation, and rock that shelf.

Good luck.

 

[aprilpremed]

Thanks to everyone who gave me the advice. Our clinical evaluation is 60% of our grade. But the time I spent on this service will equate to it being 25% of my clinical grade, which is 15% of my total grade. Hopefully I can still pull off a decent grade. Actually, other students who have had these attendings have had worse evaluations. It just sucks - but I guess I've heard worse stories.

Thanks again!

 

[DrMom]

gosh, our evals are usually 70% of our clerkship grades.

 

[DOtobe]

gosh, our evals are usually 70% of our clerkship grades.

Ours are 100% of our grade... 😡

 

[RustNeverSleeps]

Ours are 100% of our grade... 😡

Wow, so you don't have shelf exams, oral exams, papers, or presentations? That must make life so much easier to not have to worry about that stuff. Do you have that for every rotation, or just some?

 

[DOtobe]

It is like that for all our rotations. It sucks, though, because if our preceptor is pissed off the day he/she fills our evaluation form out, our grade suffers.