FindersFee5's guide to clinical rotations

[FindersFee5]

Lol if you can’t feign interest without looking like you’re totally faking it, then you need to work on your acting skills. Feigning interest doesn’t mean you tell every specialty you want to do them. It just means you pay attention, ask questions at appropriate times, try hard for your patients, etc.

I would hope that most medical students have enough curiosity and desire to learn such that all of these things can be done genuinely, without any need to "feign" anything.

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[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I would hope that most medical students have enough curiosity and desire to learn such that all of these things can be done genuinely, without any need to "feign" anything.

I mean...everyone is going to be feigning interest at some point. It isn’t a bad thing. Feigning interest when you couldn’t care less is just the right thing to do. Otherwise you just seem disinterested, which is crappy for everyone.

 

[Redpancreas]

Man this guide is awesome, if not the best.

Agreed, best I've seen regarding this topic on SDN by far.

 

[Lem0nz]

I mean...everyone is going to be feigning interest at some point. It isn’t a bad thing. Feigning interest when you couldn’t care less is just the right thing to do. Otherwise you just seem disinterested, which is crappy for everyone.

I think I agree with FF5 on this. I disagree that feigning interest is right. FF5's point is this: you don't need to feign interest or even like what you're doing on a rotation, and you don't have to pretend or say you do. But you need to recognize *why* you're there and more importantly *what you're supposed to get out of it* and convey that, rather than feigned interest, instead. Let's use surgery as the classic example: as a student its OK to be like "this is REALLY not for me, I appreciate you guys that do this but I don't enjoy it. But I definitely know why I'm here and why I need to learn about it so I understand proper referrals, diagnostic work-up that can be done prior to it getting to a surgeon, and steps I can do to make your life and my patients life better and expedite/improve their care from my end. In fact, Mr. attending/resident, is there anything I'm not thinking of that you can teach me that would help me do that? Something else I can study or learn more about?" You don't have to say that with a smile. In fact, you can say that being distressed AF because surgery is really stressing you out and be totally honest about that. But if you're approaching it with the same energy/attention/desire to improve that you do with something you really like, that's totally fine.

That's a high pass every time at minimum for me, and usually honors if they then follow through.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

this is REALLY not for me, I appreciate you guys that do this but I don't enjoy it. But I definitely know why I'm here and why I need to learn about it so I understand proper referrals, diagnostic work-up that can be done prior to it getting to a surgeon, and steps I can do to make your life and my patients life better and expedite/improve their care from my end. In fact, Mr. attending/resident, is there anything I'm not thinking of that you can teach me that would help me do that? Something else I can study or learn more about?

Lol you guys are so hung up on thinking that feigning interest is acting phony or telling everyone you want to do their specialty. Not sure how else to describe it, but literally what you are saying to do will require you to feign interest if you really don’t want to be there.

 

[Lem0nz]

Its because we have seen *so many* medical students who act phony and tell everyone they want to do our specialty when its obvious they do not want to. Your version of feigning interest and mine are semantics; to me feigning interest is pretending to be something you are not. Forcing yourself to find value in a rotation that you hate isn't feigning interest to me at all.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Its because we have seen *so many* medical students who act phony and tell everyone they want to do our specialty when its obvious they do not want to. Your version of feigning interest and mine are semantics; to me feigning interest is pretending to be something you are not. Forcing yourself to find value in a rotation that you hate isn't feigning interest to me at all.

Yeah that’s semantics. If I have zero interest in a specialty and force myself to find something to get out of it, that’s literally feigning interest. Like the definition of it.

But I’m not going to keep derailing the thread.

 

[FindersFee5]

Yeah that’s semantics. If I have zero interest in a specialty and force myself to find something to get out of it, that’s literally feigning interest. Like the definition of it.

But I’m not going to keep derailing the thread.

I think it's an interesting discussion! But I do think there is an appreciable difference between finding something to be interested in and 100% faking interest. Third year actually gave me a lot of appreciation for how the medical education system is set up and the differences in the training of midlevels and physicians. There are so many little pieces of knowledge, even if it's just what a consulting service cares about, that you wouldn't learn without immersing yourself in that service for a significant chunk of time, and these small differences add up to big improvements in the quality of patient care provided. 3rd year is your chance to look under the hood of medicine and demystify all these specialties.

I think I agree with FF5 on this. I disagree that feigning interest is right. FF5's point is this: you don't need to feign interest or even like what you're doing on a rotation, and you don't have to pretend or say you do. But you need to recognize *why* you're there and more importantly *what you're supposed to get out of it* and convey that, rather than feigned interest, instead. Let's use surgery as the classic example: as a student its OK to be like "this is REALLY not for me, I appreciate you guys that do this but I don't enjoy it. But I definitely know why I'm here and why I need to learn about it so I understand proper referrals, diagnostic work-up that can be done prior to it getting to a surgeon, and steps I can do to make your life and my patients life better and expedite/improve their care from my end. In fact, Mr. attending/resident, is there anything I'm not thinking of that you can teach me that would help me do that? Something else I can study or learn more about?" You don't have to say that with a smile. In fact, you can say that being distressed AF because surgery is really stressing you out and be totally honest about that. But if you're approaching it with the same energy/attention/desire to improve that you do with something you really like, that's totally fine.

That's a high pass every time at minimum for me, and usually honors if they then follow through.

This, exactly. I didn't tell the neurologists that I wanted to go into neurology, but I did fully immerse myself in the rotation and tried to learn everything I could - I don't know enough about the field to pick and choose knowledge and determine what's going to be useful and what's not. And I think it was a super helpful rotation! I finally learned to perform a useful neuro exam. I may not know how to localize a stroke anymore, but by seeing a bunch of stroke patients and actively participating in rounds, I do think I developed enough clinical gestalt to decide whether patient's I'm the primary for warrant a neuro consultation.

I also copied down one of the resident's AMS dot phrases and used it twice on my sub-i, because I knew that the first layer tests for AMS were all things the primary team should feel comfortable ordering.

 

[Redpancreas]

I think you both (@Matthew9Thirtyfive and @FindersFee5) are emphasizing the same values. FF5 refers to this as posture, not looking at your phone, etc. in the guide. I think M935 with his background probably preaches similar elements of discipline and decency.

 

[Lem0nz]

BTB is correct, you both agree on the principle but are arguing over the words and semantics as he and I did in another thread.

I will say in this particular context, the semantics actually does matter and I think there's some program colloquialisms. It matters because where I went to med school, residency, and fellowship, medical students/residents/attendings who used the specific phrase feigning interest meant exactly what FF5 and I have described - pretending to want to go into a specialty when you hate it. I suspect some premeds and other medical students on SDN also use that phrase to describe that behavior so in this case it is important to separate that out and say that whatever you call it, that behavior of pretending to want to go into a specialty when you actually can't stomach it, is extremely detrimental and does you no favors. FF5 and I made such a big deal about it because they called that feigning interest in all of the places I've ever trained. Sounds like that might not be the case for M935's institution.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

BTB is correct, you both agree on the principle but are arguing over the words and semantics as he and I did in another thread.

I will say in this particular context, the semantics actually does matter and I think there's some program colloquialisms. It matters because where I went to med school, residency, and fellowship, medical students/residents/attendings who used the specific phrase feigning interest meant exactly what FF5 and I have described - pretending to want to go into a specialty when you hate it. I suspect some premeds and other medical students on SDN also use that phrase to describe that behavior so in this case it is important to separate that out and say that whatever you call it, that behavior of pretending to want to go into a specialty when you actually can't stomach it, is extremely detrimental and does you no favors. FF5 and I made such a big deal about it because they called that feigning interest in all of the places I've ever trained. Sounds like that might not be the case for M935's institution.

Yeah, whatever you want to call it, sometimes you gotta fake it til you make it. The first step to changing your mindset is to change your behavior and let the mindset follow. When you have no interest in a subject, if you act like you do, it will help you actually learn stuff and do better by helping you find some stuff to be interested in.

In no way was I suggesting you should tell people you want to do a specialty you have no interest in or any other nonsense like that.