Do you think 4th year medical students should be able to write discharge summaries on patients?

[ggpia2343]

At our hospital, they have been cracking down on this. Previously what would happen is fourth year sub-interns would write discharge summaries on patients, and the upper-level resident would review the DC summary, make edits, and sign it as their own.

I think this can serve as a good exercise for 4th year students to understand the entirety of the care for their patient and is a useful exercise for preparing students for life as an intern. Thoughts?

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[Lccjblu]

same practice here.in fact as a third year we werewriting many of them. I dont see why its any bad so long as the intern/resident edits it before it gets finalized

 

[redpanda]

At our hospital, they have been cracking down on this. Previously what would happen is fourth year sub-interns would write discharge summaries on patients, and the upper-level resident would review the DC summary, make edits, and sign it as their own.

I think this can serve as a good exercise for 4th year students to understand the entirety of the care for their patient and is a useful exercise for preparing students for life as an intern. Thoughts?

As a sub-I, we had to write these on our own. I suppose there was some review by the upper level supervising the sub-Is, but in the end, the attending would cosign the summary with the usual statement of agreement + any addenda she thought necessary. All those notes were signed under my name.

 

[gutonc]

At our hospital, they have been cracking down on this. Previously what would happen is fourth year sub-interns would write discharge summaries on patients, and the upper-level resident would review the DC summary, make edits, and sign it as their own.

I think this can serve as a good exercise for 4th year students to understand the entirety of the care for their patient and is a useful exercise for preparing students for life as an intern. Thoughts?

If you think it's a good learning experience, then write one. Nobody's stopping you.

The reason you're "not allowed" to write it anymore is for billing (sort of) and liability (completely) purposes. You can rage about this all you want but it won't change the issue at the hospital admin level.

 

[ChessMaster3000]

At our hospital, they have been cracking down on this. Previously what would happen is fourth year sub-interns would write discharge summaries on patients, and the upper-level resident would review the DC summary, make edits, and sign it as their own.

I think this can serve as a good exercise for 4th year students to understand the entirety of the care for their patient and is a useful exercise for preparing students for life as an intern. Thoughts?

agree w/ @gutonc . this isnt really a"political" issue. our beloved med school deans and admins surely support this, but the hospital administrators couldn't care less. to their eyes, this is something that we will learn as residents, so we don't "need" to learn it as med students. while i agree with OP that it is a good learning experience, they have a good point also. bottom line is, there's no reason to sweat this stuff--you will learn what you need to in the end. whether you learn something as a med student vs resident has little bearing in the long run.

 

[FutureInternist]

Usually the d/c's are set up a day or two in advance, pending social issues or setting up outpt IV antibx or just monitoring for one more day once you changed everything over to po, so I would have the students on my team write up the d/c summaries the night before (giving them one less admit) & email it me
Edit, copy/paste, send Mrs Smith home