That seems to happen to me all the time. What is with these people??
OBGYN department chair: "Excellent student. Sometimes overzealous. Stayed more hours than any other medical student. Hard worker, excellent bedside manner. Loved by patients. We would love to have her enter the field of OBGYN."
Grade: B
Chair's response when I asked him about the discrepancy: "Didn't you read the comments? I gave you a great eval! I don't see what's wrong with the grade!"
I can't wait to see what my Surgery evals are like.
(bump)
Omg, SAME.
My school has evals that are out of 4, and it's nearly impossible to get a 4.
I was told to my face that my clinical knowledge was "superlative" on Ob/Gyn, but I still got a 3/4 in clinical knowledge. In fact, I've only ever gotten one 4/4 EVER, and that was for annoying my residents with pubmed articles that I looked up during downtime. I got the 4 because apparently none of the other MS3s ever bothered to look at studies.
Which brings me to my point -- to get not a good but an excellent eval, from what I've heard you have to perform at the level of a resident or a sub-i. But how do you do that? For one thing, I physically can't do the work of an intern because I AM. NOT. GIVEN. ENOUGH. AUTONOMY. Management? Much of it feels like institutional voodoo anyway, and is quite divergent from what I read in my books. Besides, management is what I'm there to learn -- I can't write your flippin' orders because I'm not even sure if my plan is even correct, and when I try to be more proactive and help, half the time I end up stepping on someone's toes or annoying a nurse or something.
But someone in my class is getting the honors evals. 30 percent, allegedly. I just haven't found those people yet.
Best eval:
"Active, engaged learner. Always seeking opportunities to take knowledge to the next level through primary research and outside reading. Fund of knowledge is excellent." --Ob/Gyn chief resident in December
Worst eval:
"Has some gaps in knowledge and didn't seem to know what those were" --Neuro attending back in the summer. No, he's not "just a jerk," I did struggle through a pimp session or two with him. This is mostly for everyone who thinks that pimp sessions don't matter as long as you're a fun-to-be-around person and also... isn't it his job to help me understand where I am deficient?
"Is by no means lacking in compassion for patients, but is somewhat awkward and stiff." --Ob/Gyn attending in clinic (followed up by statement about how I have great insight into this situation and am actively working to improve, which is commendable or whatnot.) Still got 2/4. Now, this is based on one interview, where I was stiff and awkward because I was being watched.
"Could work on teamwork" -- Ob/Gyn chief resident (followed by a very nice and explanation of a situation where some members of staff felt I had muscled another student out of a case when in fact the student gave it to me because his shift was coming to an end. Once again laced with "lockian has great insight, responds to feedback amazingly well, and has improved a lot" and similar crap. Got a 2/4). This is annoying because this is ONE case, on ONE day, and the residents acknowledge that it was a systemic issue in part, where the expectations for how students were to divide up, follow, and hand over cases were not made very clear to us.
I am so done. I try so hard every day. I can do an H&P in my sleep now and even take a stab at a plan after a few days on service. I volunteer for all the scut work, I do well on most pimp sessions, I'm generally pleasant and proactive about implementing feedback. But all it takes is an instance of bad timing or bad communication and it seems like none of the above even matters.
