An Apology to Medical Students

[Prince090]

http://in-training.org/apology-medical-students-14295

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[ActinicKeratosis]

What this article is basically saying is if you are an over-worked, unhappy, bitter resident who treats medical students poorly...just say sorry and it is all good.

 

[VincentAdultman]

You're doing something wrong if you're going five days without a real meal.

 

[zero0]

What this article is basically saying is if you are an over-worked, unhappy, bitter resident who treats medical students poorly...just say sorry and it is all good.

Yup no need to change anything, just keep being a toxic spiteful bitch and it's all okay because you're "sorry."

 

[mistafab]

What a jerk.

 

[68PGunner]

It's OB. Nuff said... Be prepared for copious amount of pain, insult, and humiliation if you want OB.

 

[ActinicKeratosis]

Reminds me of a South Park episode.

 

[ShaolinMaster]

Dear medical students, thank you for forgiving me.

Nice, because one of your former students happens to give you a passing smile that makes the tens of medical students you most likely treated like dog feces all forgive you.

Coping mechanism at it's finest.

 

[ThreeCheers]

Aaaaand this is definitely going to open the floodgates for more OB/GYN bashing even though it's not an OB/GYN resident. But yes screw that letter.

"I was just so stressed out by the pressure I was under keeping patients alive that it just came out that way."
Something I've noticed about doctors and nurses that justify their crappy attitude because they just care soooo much about the patients: they are 150% more likely to bash the patients behind their backs.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Aaaaand this is definitely going to open the floodgates for more OB/GYN bashing even though it's not an OB/GYN resident.

Seems like she was at the time. It says in her bio that she did 1.5 residencies. Probably started in OB then went to rads.

 

[ThreeCheers]

Seems like she was at the time. It says in her bio that she did 1.5 residencies. Probably started in OB then went to rads.

Well, she's a rads resident now and still being a jerk with the letter.

 

[68PGunner]

Well, she's a rads resident now and still being a jerk with the letter.

ROFL. Why the switch to Rads? It seems that she herself couldn't handle the heat in the OB boiler room.

 

[DrfluffyMD]

Lol how can you even remotely be rude to med students on rads

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Well, she's a rads resident now and still being a jerk with the letter.

But she was an OB resident when she was a huge bitch to med students, per her own admission, so I'm not sure why you're saying she's not in OB. She was and just perpetuates the stereotype, unfortunately.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Lol how can you even remotely be rude to med students on rads

She was rude to them on OB.

 

[sloop]

This resident does seem like she took neglecting/abusing the med students to another level but what I will say is that as a resident there is often some self-consciousness about whether I am teaching enough. I'm an intern right now but my current service has no upper level resident and sometimes I worry that I'm not teaching enough. I try to let med students do interviews while I watch with as little interruption as possible and do some teaching about the mental status exam afterwards. I also have a couple of topics that I have done brief talks with students about, such as the differential of altered mental status, schizophrenia pathophysiology and antipsychotics, and differentiation between affective disorders. Still, I have to admit that many days I don't do any explicit teaching. Sometimes it's just hard when your service is getting killed with admissions or you have a significant other who has barely seen you during waking hours for a week or more and they're imploring you to try to get home for dinner if at all possible.

I do try not to burden my medical students with scut that doesn't contribute to learning, though, and always say please and thank you if I ask them to do something.

 

[Perrotfish]

"I was just so stressed out by the pressure I was under keeping patients alive that it just came out that way."
Something I've noticed about doctors and nurses that justify their crappy attitude because they just care soooo much about the patients: they are 150% more likely to bash the patients behind their backs.

What she is saying has nothing to do with how much or little she cares. She is saying that her job dumped way more work and responsibility on her than she has the training to handle, and she is using up 100% of her time and energy trying not to f- up so badly that people accuse her of murdering someone. It's not that she won't help/teach you, it's that she can't. She has no mental resources left to help you with.

This is one of the the fundamental problems with medical education in this country. Responsibility for your education is given primarily to people who:
1) are only a year or two ahead of you
2) who did not sign up to be educators
3) who are not evaluated based on their abilities as educators
And
4) who get zero dollars of the tens of thousands in tuition you paid to be educated.

Imagine if, for first grade, we told the kids to just follow around the second graders and learn whatever they could. Meanwhile the principal has fired the actual teachers and kept their salaries for himself. That's medical education.

 

[ActinicKeratosis]

What she is saying has nothing to do with how much or little she cares. She is saying that her job dumped way more work and responsibility on her than she has the training to handle, and she is using up 100% of her time and energy trying not to f- up so badly that people accuse her of murdering someone. It's not that she won't help/teach you, it's that she can't. She has no mental resources left to help you with.

This is one of the the fundamental problems with medical education in this country. Responsibility for your education is given primarily to people who:
1) are only a year or two ahead of you
2) who did not sign up to be educators
3) who are not evaluated based on their abilities as educators
And
4) who get zero dollars of the tens of thousands in tuition you paid to be educated.

Imagine if, for first grade, we told the kids to just follow around the second graders and learn whatever they could. Meanwhile the principal has fired the actual teachers and kept their salaries for himself. That's medical education.

This is actually an interesting point. Where does all my money go for third and fourth year then? 50K a year so someone can organize where I go to my clerkships? Seems awfully steep to me. I think some of this tuition should go to residents/attendings. I think that would improve medical education.

 

[ThreeCheers]

ROFL. Why the switch to Rads? It seems that she herself couldn't handle the heat in the OB boiler room.

You have absolutely no idea why she switched specialties. All you're doing is fabricating a reason that suits your narrative.

But she was an OB resident when she was a huge bitch to med students, per her own admission, so I'm not sure why you're saying she's not in OB. She was and just perpetuates the stereotype, unfortunately.

There's no "was" here. She's still rationalizing her bad attitude, and writing an article declaring that her students have forgiven her. My point was that no residency, OB or otherwise, magically turns someone into a monster. People that were jerks before residency will continue to be jerks, regardless of their chosen specialty.

What she is saying has nothing to do with how much or little she cares. She is saying that her job dumped way more work and responsibility on her than she has the training to handle, and she is using up 100% of her time and energy trying not to f- up so badly that people accuse her of murdering someone. It's not that she won't help/teach you, it's that she can't. She has no mental resources left to help you with.

Yeah, I don't buy this at all. Plenty of preceptors (the vast majority in my experience) find the mental resources to do their job, and it's not like snapping at med students saves her any time or energy.

 

[Lawpy]

Well the resident who wrote that article is a jerk for sure. But there is a major concern here. If an MS3 is paired with malignant residents and attendings like that author of that article, how can they do well in the rotation? If the MS3 is actually seriously considering pursuing residency in that field, getting honors in that rotation is pretty much expected by program directors. Yet malignant supervisors can shamelessly derail the MS3’s aspirations by giving poor evals despite not interacting with them at all and despite the MS3 working very hard to take initiative and even excelling in the shelf.

I think this is a major underlying problem with clinical years. The risk of being paired with malignant residents and attendings can be significant, and if this happens in a specialty you are interested, you are effectively screwed by no fault of your own. And that’s a tragedy.

 

[sugarangelcake]

Dear medical students, thank you for forgiving me.

Nice, because one of your former students happens to give you a passing smile that makes the tens of medical students you most likely treated like dog feces all forgive you.

Coping mechanism at it's finest.

To be fair, in the original post she only writes it in the singular.

"Dear medical student: thank you for forgiving me."

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

There's no "was" here. She's still rationalizing her bad attitude, and writing an article declaring that her students have forgiven her. My point was that no residency, OB or otherwise, magically turns someone into a monster. People that were jerks before residency will continue to be jerks, regardless of their chosen specialty.

The actions in the article are in the past, hence the past tense is used when speaking about them except in a literary fashion where the present tense may be used. You can stop defending OB to me. I have nothing against it. You're tilting at windmills.

 

[threesparrows]

MS3 here... can I un-read that patronizing nonsense? I have UWorld questions to do.

 

[SunsFun]

I liked this article. Always enjoy seeing people gain insight into their mistakes and taking some responsibility. Thanks for sharing, OP.

 

[Harvest Moon]

"I’m sorry I often came off as mean and snippy. I was just so stressed out by the pressure I was under keeping patients alive that it just came out that way."

Because clearly, other doctors can't possibly be in the same position as she.

 

[IslandStyle808]

"I finally saw you in your long white coat the other day. And guess what? You were laughing and walking with someone in a short white coat. You looked over, saw me, and smiled."

Yes, because that medical student decided not to become her and actually became a role model to be looked up to. Words are cheap and as an attending she'll keep saying things like "if I did residency again I would help the medical students more etc." Sorry but she had her chance to do those things and if she were a resident again you would slouch back to those habits. She talks the talk, but the one who walked the walk was that former medical student.

 

[SunsFun]

"I finally saw you in your long white coat the other day. And guess what? You were laughing and walking with someone in a short white coat. You looked over, saw me, and smiled."

Yes, because that medical student decided not to become her and actually became a role model to be looked up to. Words are cheap and as an attending she'll keep saying things like "if I did residency again I would help the medical students more etc." Sorry but she had her chance to do those things and if she were a resident again you would slouch back to those habits. She talks the talk, but the one who walked the walk was that former medical student.

With all due respect, you don’t know her. Why speculate and assume the very worst in people? Just give her the benefit of the doubt and hope that when given another opportunity to help out, she will make better choices.

 

[IslandStyle808]

With all due respect, you don’t know her. Why speculate and assume the very worst in people? Just give her the benefit of the doubt and hope that when given another opportunity to help out, she will make better choices.

There is more than enough inferences in there to know whether she really is regretting or not. Residency is 3-5 long years and more than enough time to change yourself. If you can't change yourself in that time, then what makes you think that if given a second chance at residency you would change?

Instead of feeling regret when that medical student smiled at her, she thought "thank god he/she forgives me." If she was really sorry she shouldn't think about being forgiven, she should be thinking about how to never make the same mistakes. This right here is the root of the problem and she doesn't realize it.

 

[SunsFun]

There is more than enough inferences in there to know whether she really is regretting or not. Residency is 3-5 long years and more than enough time to change yourself. If you can't change yourself in that time, then what makes you think that if given a second chance at residency you would change?

Instead of feeling regret when that medical student smiled at her, she thought "thank god he/she forgives me." If she was really sorry she shouldn't think about being forgiven, she should be thinking about how to never make the same mistakes. This right here is the root of the problem and she doesn't realize it.

Why is it so difficult for you to just accept what says at the face value and hope for the best?

I have no idea what she is going to do. Neither do you. We also don’t know what she is thinking or doing at the moment. No need to be grasping at straws. None of us here are perfect.

 

[Redpancreas]

But there is a major concern here. If an MS3 is paired with malignant residents and attendings like that author of that article, how can they do well in the rotation? If the MS3 is actually seriously considering pursuing residency in that field, getting honors in that rotation is pretty much expected by program directors. Yet malignant supervisors can shamelessly derail the MS3’s aspirations.

Unfortunately your foresight is on point, Lawper. What ends up happening is clerkship directors try to keep an eye on who bad evaluators are and help students out. Furthermore, it seems like program directors are starting to become more wary of "glowing" MSPE comments and possibly clerkship grades, although many competitive places probably screen for honors in their field. Their argument is if 25% of your class did it, why couldn't you? Also, the cream will always rise to the top and there won't be any shortage of double 260+, AOA, multi-pub, third year-all-honors candidates come application time. Students who consistently did well are likely safe bets.

The ideal system would be where specific soft-criteria are used to evaluate students to eliminate differences in perceptions among residents and residents should be coached about these criteria at orientation. For example, each two times a student misses an assignment or is late is one-less-point they're eligible for professionalism-wise. The issue with this, however, is enforcing this would literally double a residents work and at the end of the day, there's no tangible benefit to evaluating medical students accurately because the current system does no harm. Suppose a school mixed up Clerkship grades for two students and gave the wrong student Honors or the NBME mixed up a 230 vs. a 260 step score. I highly doubt tasks in a top tier residency would be able to "expose" the student with actually average medical school performance as being a "pretender" rather than a "contender". Therefore doling out honors doesn't really do any harm.

Lastly, everyone third year thinks they deserve clinical honors. I'm not saying students don't work hard, because everyone puts their heart into it. At the end of the day, some or more prepared to be residents than others. This really messes up any correction process course directors attempt. For every resident that truly grades too subjectively/unfairly, there's a medical student looking for any opportunity to contest their clinical satisfactory. "That person didn't evaluate me", "They didn't see me do a XYZ they evaluated me on", and they'll cling to that technicality and hammer the Course Director with emails and fight tooth and nail for honors and some are successful.

 

[Crayola227]

wow a lot of entitled dickheads in here

 

[em20178]

And the variability of the residents sucks too. Some will ask you "what do you think is going on?" And that's it. They won't listen to your history or physical. And some want to know way more info than what is necessary just so they can write on the eval that you don't ask enough questions. I think thats what I was burned on with some of the SLOE's, and feedback. Intentional spitefulness.

 

[libertyyne]

wow a lot of entitled dickheads in here

I think its fair that if you are going to treat me like **** during a rotation and not engage me , that you dont give me a bad eval afterwards. I get you have stuff going on , you are busy, overworked, tired, exhausted. Dont double burn me, I can put up with the abuse but dont give me a bad eval to further **** my chances of matching well.

 

[SunsFun]

I think its fair that if you are going to treat me like **** during a rotation and not engage me , that you dont give me a bad eval afterwards. I get you have stuff going on , you are busy, overworked, tired, exhausted. Dont double burn me, I can put up with the abuse but dont give me a bad eval to further **** my chances of matching well.

I don’t wanna respond for Crayola but my guess is that she was referring to the crowd ready to crucify the resident that has ADMITTED that she was wrong and is APOLOGIZING for it.

 

[Lawpy]

wow a lot of entitled dickheads in here

I don’t wanna respond for Crayola but my guess is that she was referring to the crowd ready to crucify the resident that has ADMITTED that she was wrong and is APOLOGIZING for it.

So wait, you think that resident's apology was sincere? Because apparently that's not the case here but who knows. I'm a lot more concerned about the threat of malignant residents and attendings who are willing to sabotage an MS3's chances of matching by giving crappy evals despite not even interacting with them or relegating them to bad tasks without giving them an opportunity to learn and develop clinical skills.

 

[SunsFun]

So wait, you think that resident's apology was sincere? Because apparently that's not the case here but who knows. I'm a lot more concerned about the threat of malignant residents and attendings who are willing to sabotage an MS3's chances of matching by giving crappy evals despite not even interacting with them or relegating them to bad tasks without giving them an opportunity to learn and develop clinical skills.

Do you have any evidence to suggest that the apology is not sincere? As you mentioned, nobody here can say for sure. So why not give this residents the benefit of the doubt? What's so hard about that? Or should we just continue judging her for the rest of her life?

How many of the people throwing rocks here have personally experienced "malignant residents and attendings" actually sabotaging their match with bad evals? And I honestly don't see why should this one individual, who is by saying sorry for what she did, be used to make a point about people that have nothing to do with her.

 

[Crayola227]

lol the article said it was reproduced in a similar form on SDN..... so I sincerely hope it was sincere

or is SDN acting like the Onion, haha parody of a resident giving any ****s about students!! hahahah

I doubt it

 

[ortnakas]

Wait... a resident makes a post about how she realizes she wasn't a good teacher as a resident, and we go after her for it? Shouldn't we be reserving our negative energy those who don't realize (or don't care)?

I mean, yeah, it sounds like her students got a less than stellar experience, but on the other hand, I've seen some pretty overwhelmed residents out there, and I think it's probably good that they're putting their patients ahead of their MS3s. Would obviously be better if they could teach too, but at least the author realized where she's messed up in the past and is A) apologizing for it and B) hopefully encouraging others to not make the same mistakes.

 

[Lawpy]

Do you have any evidence to suggest that the apology is not sincere? As you mentioned, nobody here can say for sure. So why not give this residents the benefit of the doubt? What's so hard about that? Or should we just continue judging her for the rest of her life?

How many of the people throwing rocks here have personally experienced "malignant residents and attendings" actually sabotaging their match with bad evals? And I honestly don't see why should this one individual, who is by saying sorry for what she did, be used to make a point about people that have nothing to do with her.

lol the article said it was reproduced in a similar form on SDN..... so I sincerely hope it was sincere

or is SDN acting like the Onion, haha parody of a resident giving any ****s about students!! hahahah

I doubt it

People can disingenuously express their feelings to attract sympathy from readers, and this can happen anywhere, even on SDN articles. I think the frustration lies in the fact that the resident in question pretty much burned the students by being unhelpful or even possibly malignant (based on the examples mentioned earlier in the thread), and her apology came after the fact and trivialized the harm she had done. This behavior pretty much angered the students and some residents here, which is why she’s getting a lot of hate. And her past behavior is an example of the ongoing problem of malignant residents and attendings who continue to burn students and destroy their match prospects.

That seems to be an underlying problem here which explains why it’s difficult to forgive that resident even if she says she’s sorry, sincerely or insincerely. At least that’s what I’m seeing here.

I’m just an observer here although I’m pretty concerned with situations involving malignant residents and attendings during clinical years and how to successfully handle them.

 

[SunsFun]

People can disingenuously express their feelings to attract sympathy from readers, and this can happen anywhere, even on SDN articles. I think the frustration lies in the fact that the resident in question pretty much burned the students by being unhelpful or even possibly malignant (based on the examples mentioned earlier in the thread), and her apology came after the fact and trivialized the harm she had done. This behavior pretty much angered the students and some residents here, which is why she’s getting a lot of hate. And her past behavior is an example of the ongoing problem of malignant residents and attendings who continue to burn students and destroy their match prospects.

That seems to be an underlying problem here which explains why it’s difficult to forgive that resident even if she says she’s sorry, sincerely or insincerely. At least that’s what I’m seeing here.

I’m just an observer here although I’m pretty concerned with situations involving malignant residents and attendings during clinical years and how to successfully handle them.

I don't see you answering my questions in your post here. You are basically paraphrasing your earlier comment.

The only new thing I see is that she "pretty much burned the students by being unhelpful or even possibly malignant (based on the examples mentioned earlier in the thread), and her apology came after the fact and trivialized the harm she had done". Now, again, do you have any actual evidence that her actions caused serious harm to MS3s? I also question your judgement when somehow in your mind the apology trivialized the harm done.

Now what truly pisses me off. "which explains why it’s difficult to forgive that resident even if" part. Really, dude? Who are you in this story exactly to decide whether to forgive her? Are you the student she wrote a letter to? This is exactly the entitlement attitude Crayola mentioned.

The irony of this conversation is that, in my observation, it is the whiniest most sycophant med students who end up becoming the type of residents that they complained about as MS3s.

 

[Lawpy]

I don't see you answering my questions in your post here. You are basically paraphrasing your earlier comment.

The only new thing I see is that she "pretty much burned the students by being unhelpful or even possibly malignant (based on the examples mentioned earlier in the thread), and her apology came after the fact and trivialized the harm she had done". Now, again, do you have any actual evidence that her actions caused serious harm to MS3s? I also question your judgement when somehow in your mind the apology trivialized the harm done.

Now what truly pisses me off. "which explains why it’s difficult to forgive that resident even if" part. Really, dude? Who are you in this story exactly to decide whether to forgive her? Are you the student she wrote a letter to? This is exactly the entitlement attitude Crayola mentioned.

The irony of this conversation is that, in my observation, it is the whiniest most sycophant med students who end up becoming the type of residents that they complained about as MS3s.

I mean the only thing we have to work with is the article she wrote, which is inherently one-sided. We don’t know what students think of her or what she really thinks of them (people can write in a way to garner sympathy from readers regardless of sincerity). So it’s pretty much impossible either way to find evidence for or against claims made if all we have is this article to follow.

So what we rely on is tying this article to experiences encountered. And that’s where differences in reactions to this article are clearly seen. Those who have dealt with malignant residents and attendings may categorize this resident’s behavior as unforgivable, while others can be more receptive and understanding. I think the strong negative reactions are due to encountering negative residents on regular basis and being slammed with negative evals despite doing everything they can to be proactive and engaged.

Yeah there is entitled behavior seen here and probably my use of the word “forgive” wasn’t the best even though I was merely describing the reasons behind negative reception. And yeah you’re probably right that whiny MS3s don’t help either. Maybe SDN threads complaining about getting bad evals from bad residents and attendings are grossly exaggerated and what happens in reality is markedly better than what’s reacted on SDN.

I just think that differences in personal experiences explain differences in reactions, and why this article gets so much hate. But it’s impossible to find any good evidence from this article alone so the key decision is whether to actually believe that resident or not,

 

[CherryRedDracul]

You're doing something wrong if you're going five days without a real meal.

I'm guessing she was hangry. It's the #1 cause of malignant residents.

Fellow residents, please eat.

 

[libertyyne]

I don't see you answering my questions in your post here. You are basically paraphrasing your earlier comment.

The only new thing I see is that she "pretty much burned the students by being unhelpful or even possibly malignant (based on the examples mentioned earlier in the thread), and her apology came after the fact and trivialized the harm she had done". Now, again, do you have any actual evidence that her actions caused serious harm to MS3s? I also question your judgement when somehow in your mind the apology trivialized the harm done.

Now what truly pisses me off. "which explains why it’s difficult to forgive that resident even if" part. Really, dude? Who are you in this story exactly to decide whether to forgive her? Are you the student she wrote a letter to? This is exactly the entitlement attitude Crayola mentioned.

The irony of this conversation is that, in my observation, it is the whiniest most sycophant med students who end up becoming the type of residents that they complained about as MS3s.

I think a better question is , what did this resident do after realizing her past behavior may have been poor? The other issue with the entire thing is blaming her behavior on outside forces, rather than accepting responsibility of her actions. There is no proposed changes to the way we educate future physicians, there are no proposed changes to her own behavior on how she would handle things differently. The whole thing comes off as a " you are going to have a ****ty educational experience because of me , and I am sorry" Seems like she is implying this is the status quo and it sucks. She also implies that perhaps a different person in her place may have behaved differently. So even if her intentions were noble , her apology comes off an disingenuous. She didnt even apologize to the student who is now an attending.

 

[KnuxNole]

I'm guessing she was hangry. It's the #1 cause of malignant residents.

Fellow residents, please eat.

Yes, a good ole fashion hot dog and fries helps wonders.

I understand that it can be difficult for residents to be teachers. I know from first hand experience some of my co-residents loved it and did everything they could to help them get the most out of their rotation experience. And some, that said that they don't like having people following them and send them off to study. And some, who mentioned that they either have zero teaching experience, or did not sign up to be a teacher and hates the process.

In regards to the example where everyone was running and didn't alert the medical students....unfortunately it happens. If there is an emergency or an urgent matter, sometimes medical students are simply an afterthought. However, most residents make an effort to alert students of cool moments. Especially if they are present.

It's not my place to say if she is sincere or not. It's never ok to have malignant behavior as residents, and as an attending, I always encourage residents to play an active role in teaching and mentoring those lower in their "rank". When I was a resident, I enjoyed teaching students, as it reinforced my clinical knowledge, and it felt like I was doing something good for the community. At the same time, it appears that the poster was at least giving insight and not being oblivious to her actions.

 

[mcloaf]

People can disingenuously express their feelings to attract sympathy from readers, and this can happen anywhere, even on SDN articles. I think the frustration lies in the fact that the resident in question pretty much burned the students by being unhelpful or even possibly malignant (based on the examples mentioned earlier in the thread), and her apology came after the fact and trivialized the harm she had done. This behavior pretty much angered the students and some residents here, which is why she’s getting a lot of hate. And her past behavior is an example of the ongoing problem of malignant residents and attendings who continue to burn students and destroy their match prospects.

That seems to be an underlying problem here which explains why it’s difficult to forgive that resident even if she says she’s sorry, sincerely or insincerely. At least that’s what I’m seeing here.

I’m just an observer here although I’m pretty concerned with situations involving malignant residents and attendings during clinical years and how to successfully handle them.

No single resident evaluation can "destroy" your match prospects if you're an otherwise qualified applicant. The only way I can see an eval having that level of impact would be if you did something truly terrible which led to getting a bad LOR from the Chair of your home department for whatever field you're applying. I suspect the number of students truly having their match prospects unfairly destroyed by a mean attending or resident is minuscule, if they exist at all.

I mean the only thing we have to work with is the article she wrote, which is inherently one-sided. We don’t know what students think of her or what she really thinks of them (people can write in a way to garner sympathy from readers regardless of sincerity). So it’s pretty much impossible either way to find evidence for or against claims made if all we have is this article to follow.

So what we rely on is tying this article to experiences encountered. And that’s where differences in reactions to this article are clearly seen. Those who have dealt with malignant residents and attendings may categorize this resident’s behavior as unforgivable, while others can be more receptive and understanding. I think the strong negative reactions are due to encountering negative residents on regular basis and being slammed with negative evals despite doing everything they can to be proactive and engaged.

Yeah there is entitled behavior seen here and probably my use of the word “forgive” wasn’t the best even though I was merely describing the reasons behind negative reception. And yeah you’re probably right that whiny MS3s don’t help either. Maybe SDN threads complaining about getting bad evals from bad residents and attendings are grossly exaggerated and what happens in reality is markedly better than what’s reacted on SDN.

I just think that differences in personal experiences explain differences in reactions, and why this article gets so much hate. But it’s impossible to find any good evidence from this article alone so the key decision is whether to actually believe that resident or not,

Most of what she's describing is ****ty but I think the word malignant is being used way too loosely if we're talking about stuff like not greeting students warmly or grabbing them when something is happening. You're right that's it's really impossible to say when she talks about stuff like coming off as mean or snippy. She could just be curt or she could be full on verbally abusive, but I doubt someone who was in the latter category would eventually end up writing a public apology letter.

I think you're right that SDN exaggerates the perception of this problem, at least in my experience as an M3. You will absolutely have people who are not good teachers or don't involve you or don't even seem to like you. You will have some people who give you bad evals for no reason. That being said, if you're going through M3 getting constantly slammed by bad evals that reflects at least as much on the student as it does on the evaluators. I doubt the type of people who go through M3 getting a lot of terrible evals are the sort to have enough insight to consider what they can change to improve. Lastly, as in all things SDN is dominated by extremes. Nobody is going to come on here and make a thread saying "hey I had a pretty okay rotation and my eval was warmly average."

 

[TRPMinus]

Yeah there's more than one MS1 in this thread (myself included). How the hell do y'all even have anything to contribute to the "malignant resident" conversation? Just keep your socks on til third year and don't go into it looking for trouble.
Also, the article is trash, not for the reasons being outlined above, but because it is terribly written and cheesy beyond belief. Sounds like a bad personal statement.
But, per SDN standards we all must assume the worst and therefore trash not only her writing, but her as a person.

Y'all need to go get laid

 

[Psych_hopeful]

http://in-training.org/apology-medical-students-14295

So this whole article's point is: Because life is hard, please understand I can be a jerk. -_-

Just from an argumentative standpoint, that's a really poor line of thought. If being a doctor is what you wanted to do, first, why is life hard and second, if life is hard, why do you have to be a jerk about it? PLENTY of people have hard lives far worse than this individual who dont have bad attitudes and even if they didn't, she CHOSE this life. If she IS being a jerk because her life is hard, then she chose poorly.

 

[ThreeCheers]

Most students don’t care about residents not having time to teach (especially on a hated rotation like OB), and are happy to sit in the corner and study for their shelf. The problem is that she, by her own admission, was outwardly rude to students. She may have been stressed and tired, but it’s still pretty weak to take that out on the lowest man on the totem pole that can’t defend themselves. The fact that she’s still making excuses, which boil down to “I have the lifestyle that many other residents manage to cope with”, makes her even less sympathetic in my eyes.

The irony of this conversation is that, in my observation, it is the whiniest most sycophant med students who end up becoming the type of residents that they complained about as MS3s.

So it pisses you off that people read this article and make their own (admittedly subjective) inferences about the author’s character, but you’re allowed to infer that random people on the internet are whiney, entitled, and will be bad residents? Uh, ok.

 

[SunsFun]

Most students don’t care about residents not having time to teach (especially on a hated rotation like OB), and are happy to sit in the corner and study for their shelf. The problem is that she, by her own admission, was outwardly rude to students. She may have been stressed and tired, but it’s still pretty weak to take that out on the lowest man on the totem pole that can’t defend themselves. The fact that she’s still making excuses, which boil down to “I have the lifestyle that many other residents manage to cope with”, makes her even less sympathetic in my eyes.



So it pisses you off that people read this article and make their own (admittedly subjective) inferences about the author’s character, but you’re allowed to infer that random people on the internet are whiney, entitled, and will be bad residents? Uh, ok.

An apology that includes some excuses is still an apology. I am sure there are ways to write it better, but there is no point in splitting hairs.

It's not about people making inferences. Read the comment I responded to again. It's about people here saying they have hard time forgiving her even though she hasn't done any harm to them personally. i think the author of that comment realized how it came across and clarified it better in his next response.

Btw, yes, you can infer anything about anyone on the internet filled with anonymous users who are saying ridiculous thing. Way different from someone outing themselves in a much more personal and not a very positive way.

 

[Stagg737]

An apology that includes some excuses is still an apology. I am sure there are ways to write it better, but there is no point in splitting hairs.

It's not about people making inferences. Read the comment I responded to again. It's about people here saying they have hard time forgiving her even though she hasn't done any harm to them personally. i think the author of that comment realized how it came across and clarified it better in his next response.

Btw, yes, you can infer anything about anyone on the internet filled with anonymous users who are saying ridiculous thing. Way different from someone outing themselves in a much more personal and not a very positive way.

Sorry, but I disagree. Excuses are like a-holes, everyone's got one and they're usually full of crap. Maybe if it were a one time thing it wouldn't be an issue, but there's no excuse for years of bad behavior. A "knowing nod" from a single former student doesn't mean everything is alright. Her false sense of catharsis because of that one interaction is what makes this entire article seem more of a "residency sucks so much it made me a bad person but I'm not really a bad person" statement than any kind of actual apology.