Clinical Rotations Grading

[Tonkamoo]

Hi All,

I'm curious to hear how your vet schools grade and give feed back during clinical rotations. Here at RVC we've had a change this year: in the past they gave out either distinction, merit, pass or fail, and now we have switched to just getting pass/fail, along with verbal feedback each week on how you performed.

I'm interested to know how this might affect internship applications - as all they can see on our transcript is that we passed every rotation, which doesn't seem like the most impressive feat. So it'd be great to hear how other vet schools grade you, and what you have to show on your transcript when you apply for jobs/internships.

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[WhtsThFrequency]

VMRCVM is pass/fail. Texas A&M is graded (not sure of the scale, but I know I gave 4th years a number grade for rotations when I was a resident there).

For internships, letters of recommendation carry MUCH more weight than any qualitative grading of clinical rotations. I suppose getting a bunch of "distinction" might be a feather in your cap, but it isn't the be-all and end-all of getting an internship.

Most actual jobs don't care that much about your grades (or NAVLE score for that matter), either. Again, LORs, skills, interview, etc. trump them.

 

[variegata]

Our rotations are A/S/F (A/Satisfactory/Fail). They tell us in the beginning to expect mostly S's and not to be disappointed with that.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

I think the problem with grading clinics in any way is that it is so very subjective. That is why honestly, I prefer broad categories like P/F. That was I can say ok, does this person have the clinical and personal acumen and skills to be a vet, yes or no. It wouldn't get all muddled by personality clashes, etc.

That and the fact that students are obsessed with grades and it becomes very difficult as the grader when you have to assign a number or a specific category to a non-quantitative performance (i.e. not a test). People will moan and groan when you give them a B when they think they deserve an A, or a "satisfactory" instead of "excellent", and say it is because you "didn't like them" and bull**** like that.

 

[Tonkamoo]

Thanks for the replies - its good to know other schools also use a p/f system also (or close to it). I agree that grading rotations seems extremely subjective, especially given they are only one to two weeks long. It just seems like the one area where your performance is actually a good indicator of how you would do in the real world, at least more so than a written MCQ exam...

 

[Tiraka]

Yes, TAMU uses the traditional A, B, C, etc grading scale, at least as of 2012. Some rotations (like pathology) had very specific criteria that your grade was derived from, while others were purely subjective based on the opinion of your clinician. There wasn't much consistency - on many rotations, students who did the necessary work for their cases, showed some knowledge in rounds, and were nice to work with got A's. A few clinicians stated that everyone started at a C or B grade, and that you had to earn anything above that by demonstrating above average knowledge/skills/work ethic. We got written feedback along with the letter grade after each rotation. A pass/fail system might have been preferable for consistency if nothing else. The increased number of A's looked nice on my transcripts, but in my fairly broad search for a first job, I had exactly 0 people request them or even ask about my grades (can't comment on match since I didn't go that route).

 

[nyanko]

Our clinic grading is kinda BS to be honest. The evals are totally subjective and it's supposed to be that top 10% (subjectively, remember) get an A or "Outstanding", then there is "High Quality" which equals a B+, "Satisfactory" which equals a B-, "Marginal" which is a D and Fail which is obvious. We're allowed one Marginal without having to repeat. Two Marginals means repeating those rotations. Everyone's graded by whatever faculty clinicians they had on their last week of the rotation with resident input, which varies pretty insanely. Some clinicians default to HQ while others default to S. It makes a pretty big difference in the grades so it sucks that it's that way.

Also there are often really cryptic and/or completely contradictory comments on successive evals or even the same eval from the same service. Overall I can probably count on one hand the number of evaluations I've gotten in my huge number of rotations completed so far that were at all useful or constructive.

 

[Coquette22]

AVC uses EP (excellent performance), SP (satisfactory performance), MP (marginal performance) and FP (failing performance). I don't think they translate to any sort of numbers, just that you have to get at least MP on all your rotations, but no more than 9 weeks can be MP.

 

[racccjlm]

Hugely subjective, making final class rank/GPA kind of a joke (we receive grades).

 

[lei325]

As having gone through rotations at RVC and having the D,M,P,B,F system, I can tell you it sucks. There were rotations that I got amazing feedback for and only got PPP, and there were rotations that I got cut-and-paste feedback with DPP. Also, if you end up working harder than your rotation-mates and the grade didn't reflect that, it was annoying (some rotations will grade you as a group and not individually, so if one person brought you down, everyone's grades went down). So honestly, the P/F is a much better system and something that my year pushed for when we had our rotations feedback meeting with Church.

 

[mas185]

UCD still gives actual letter grades for rotations, but we now have these like standardized checklists with a comment section that they email out as a "grade report" after each rotation. The checks are two columns, either satisfactory or unsatisfactory and the categories are like professionalism, organizational skills, application of knowledge, practical skills, patient care, tutorial performance etc. (with lots of subcats) it's supposed to make things more "transparent" but the letter grades seem to be (at least to me) completely arbitrary still - based entirely on whether the clinician likes you and how good your group dynamic is ... For example I've never gotten an unsatisfactory check on anything but my grades are all over the place ... I got an A in one rotation and no comments because I got the nice grading pathologist (another problem, depending on who's in charge that week your grades can be completely different from someone who did the exact same work as you) and I got a C+ in one with glowing feedback comments ... none of it makes any sense. But for us anyway these grades make up only like 10% of the grade that shows up on our transcripts since we have to take tests during the rotations as well as written and practical final exams too (plus presentations and projects in some modules). So I guess technically the personality clashes shouldn't matter too much overall as long as you study and pass your exams but it kind of drives me crazy that they are worth so little and most people make such an effort for them.

Either way, from everything I've heard, your actual grades matter very, very little when applying for internships, they are much more interested in your letters of recommendation/references.