How to be an awesome MS3 Made Ridiculously Simple

[Happy613]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I thought people who just finished 3rd and 4th year (or anybody really) could post some advice on the do's and dont's of being on the floors.

THIS IS WHAT WORKED FOR ME:

Most medical students make the mistake of thinking that they are competing with other students on the rotation.

In my experience it tends to be that your group --in that rotation -- is competing with previous groups. Attendings and residents often don't really bother to distinguish between students, but do notice when a group of students are particularly good. (Obviously this is not always the case, but I found it often times was.)

My last rotation, I was on a team with one other student who is a good friend, we had done most of 3rd year together and were pretty savy about how to go about our role as "MSIII's." We worked as a unit, always looking out for each other. If one of us was running late the other wrote the notes, we always did the same amount of work. We would both carry the same amount of patients, and go to the same amount of cases.

We never let the other one look bad. If he got pimped, and did'nt know, when I was asked I would'nt know (even if I did) and vice versa. We talked each other up in a sincere way. I would make sure to mention to the team how he had stayed late, or scrubbed in on a long case. He would do the same for me. Often times students work really hard, and the only ones to notice are your fellow students, its on us to let the team know how awesome they are doing.

We kept in touch throughout the day, if there was something cool going on we would make sure to let each other know. We made sure that we arrived and left at the same time.

We made a decision that we were a team within a team. We were always honest, we never lied about wanting to go into fields of medicine we had no intrest in, but we would always be enthusiastic. And we both learned a ton.

Our evals were great, and the attendings commented on what a hard working "group" we were. We had both seen over the year how certian students had been super competitive and down right hostile to their peers. Even if our evals had sucked, we knew that we had acted in an honorable way.

 

[RonaldColeman]

I thought people who just finished 3rd and 4th year (or anybody really) could post some advice on the do's and dont's of being on the floors.

THIS IS WHAT WORKED FOR ME:

Most medical students make the mistake of thinking that they are competing with other students on the rotation.

In my experience it tends to be that your group --in that rotation -- is competing with previous groups. Attendings and residents often don't really bother to distinguish between students, but do notice when a group of students are particularly good. (Obviously this is not always the case, but I found it often times was.)

My last rotation, I was on a team with one other student who is a good friend, we had done most of 3rd year together and were pretty savy about how to go about our role as "MSIII's." We worked as a unit, always looking out for each other. If one of us was running late the other wrote the notes, we always did the same amount of work. We would both carry the same amount of patients, and go to the same amount of cases.

We never let the other one look bad. If he got pimped, and did'nt know, when I was asked I would'nt know (even if I did) and vice versa. We talked each other up in a sincere way. I would make sure to mention to the team how he had stayed late, or scrubbed in on a long case. He would do the same for me. Often times students work really hard, and the only ones to notice are your fellow students, its on us to let the team know how awesome they are doing.

We kept in touch throughout the day, if there was something cool going on we would make sure to let each other know. We made sure that we arrived and left at the same time.

We made a decision that we were a team within a team. We were always honest, we never lied about wanting to go into fields of medicine we had no intrest in, but we would always be enthusiastic. And we both learned a ton.

Our evals were great, and the attendings commented on what a hard working "group" we were. We had both seen over the year how certian students had been super competitive and down right hostile to their peers. Even if our evals had sucked, we knew that we had acted in an honorable way.

Outstanding advice. Outstanding. I was just thinking about this the other day. I was on a rotation where, due to extraneous circumstances, I was not able to work as hard as I would have liked. My evaluation at the end, however, was awesome. Although I did not perform at a high level, the other members of my team--2 other students and our residents--performed at a level that I never saw matched the rest of 3rd year. I definitely agree that your individual evaluation is often a reflection of how well your team performed, rather than your individual performance. Once again, excellent insight.

 

[MediCane2006]

If you are on a team with friends or students of similar personalities, the above is the single best way to ensure that every rotation will be a low-stress, high-yield, satisfactory experience. I did one rotation with my best friend, following the same basic principles as laid out by the OP. We took call together, and if one person was done admitting they would stick around to help the other admit. We would help each other pre-round if one person was carrying more patients than the other. It was the best rotation ever, and I got the best eval ever as a reward.

However, the teamwork concept only goes so far. Unfortunately you're not always going to be on a rotation with someone who facilitates working as a team. For whatever reason (wanting to match in that specialty, general gunnerificness - or on the opposite end of the spectrum, laziness), some students are going to resist the teamwork concept and either want to show you up or complain that you are showing them up. No matter who you're working with, I think one of the big skills to learn in the M3 year is to adapt to different personalities and make the best of each situation. Be pleasant, but maintain your own standards of professionalism and work ethic, and resist the temptation to stoop to some of the crap you'll see other students pull this year. I think you'll be amazed (I was!) at how the hospital can bring out the best in some of your classmates and the absolute worst in others.

 

[Adcadet]

I whole-heartedly agree with the OP. Unfortunately, there are few rotations where this is possible. But when it is, it's awesome. You basically show your team that you'll make a great team player as a resident. You can also make it a point to have one student teach the other in a friendly and informal way in front of the team, and vice-versa, based on patients that one saw but not the other. That's a lot easier than trying to put together a presentation on that weird heart murmur to your attending, who's bored by the topic and knows everything about it already.

 

[angel80]

I whole-heartedly agree with the OP. Unfortunately, there are few rotations where this is possible. But when it is, it's awesome. You basically show your team that you'll make a great team player as a resident. You can also make it a point to have one student teach the other in a friendly and informal way in front of the team, and vice-versa, based on patients that one saw but not the other. That's a lot easier than trying to put together a presentation on that weird heart murmur to your attending, who's bored by the topic and knows everything about it already.

All of my third year rotations (except for FM) involved having other students on my team. I agree 100% with the OP. That was the strategy that worked for me throughout my third year. I have a friend who for some reason, never seems to get along with her residents/fellows/classmates, and every month she would complain about how miserable she was on her rotation. I had the exact opposite experience. At the end of each rotation, I was a little sad to leave behind my team. With every new team I had, we would all exchange cell phone #s on the first day, and would help each other out throughout the month. If someone was running late in the morning, someone else would go and see that persons patients, so he/she wouldn't get in trouble. If someone had more work to do than everyone else, we would help that person out. When I went back to ask one of my attendings for a Letter of Recommendation for my Residency application, she said "Sure, I would love to write a letter for you. Your group was the best group of medical students I've ever had for a rotation. You all impressed me the way you worked together and got so much work done."

 

[Paws]

Does this work as well when your team does not include a good friend? I think it is terrific advice and I try and do this whenever I am in a potentially competitive group situation. People will tend to want to join in when there is an atmosphere of "we're all working together here!" Also, if I make the first gesture of generosity and sharing, most people will respond pretty well to that and reciprocate. Seems to break the ice and make the dynamics more friendly.

Sometimes, I have found that it doesn't work and some people will not want to show up on time, do their work, work together or whatever. Overall, I am going to try and do what you suggest and I think alot of my friends will tend to want to do this as well. Awesome suggestions and I am glad to hear how well it is perceived by staff and attendings. 👍

 

[mattie113]

here's the secret: watch this episode and study the art of "showmanship" ala george in this episode "the burning"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697663/

with this simple technique, you can (and maybe should) bumble around for most of any rotation doing a pretty crappy job overall. then, during the last week or even better, the last day, pull off a show-stopping performance of perfection and leave them wanting more. it really never fails!! 😉

 

[The Squid]

Does this work if not all of the team can get good grades? According to the MS3's at my school, it's just like the first two years. Top 15% get honors, next 25% get high pass, everyone else passes. (Of course it's a rough estimate since you're dividing up small numbers of people). They said not everyone can honor or even high pass a rotation and you're in competition with the other students on your rotation for you grades, not with the class as a whole 🙁

 

[Adcadet]

Does this work if not all of the team can get good grades? According to the MS3's at my school, it's just like the first two years. Top 15% get honors, next 25% get high pass, everyone else passes. (Of course it's a rough estimate since you're dividing up small numbers of people). They said not everyone can honor or even high pass a rotation and you're in competition with the other students on your rotation for you grades, not with the class as a whole 🙁

Well, you're also competing against other teams at the same hospital, and against other teams at other hospital, and depending on how the allocate the top 15% (or whatever percentage your school uses), you may be competing against those who rotated before or after you.

 

[Paws]

Well, you're also competing against other teams at the same hospital, and against other teams at other hospital, and depending on how the allocate the top 15% (or whatever percentage your school uses), you may be competing against those who rotated before or after you.

Wha ... ? Adcadet, I feel like your little white mouse there. All pink eyed and confused. This honors sh^t is for the birds. We have people at my school who would sell their own grandmother if it meant a couple of points higher and honors. Maybe even sell their own mother, I don't know.

That's a dumb way to go after grades, and alot of these same people might get the honors but I would not bring my kids or familly to them. I mean, getting honors in biochem and being an intelligent, friendly internist are not necessarily the same thing. Some of my classmates kind of scare me.

Not everyone who does well is like that, but we have our share of scary gunners. I wish we could just focus on learning what we need to know to be good clinicians and cut out this competing against each other cr@p. It fosters such animosity and fear among classmates, how can that serve patients well? 😡

 

[Anka]

Totally agree about gunning for grades. You see people all the time cursing themselves when they get their grades back, thinking "May, I kissed all this a$$, and all I got was a high pass!" Don't do anything where you're going to be saying this at the end. Don't screw over your classmates, because those people are your collegues for life. Focus on learning to be a good doctor, taking care of your patients, taking care of your intern (who, this time of year, may need more care than your patients), and helping out your team. Choose the site where you're going to get the most responsibility, even if that means less time to study, and practice being a doctor. You may find that your grade is better than those who were worrying about honors the whole way through.

Anka

 

[gunit07]

awwww! that's so nice🙂 can i be on your team?

i had this horrible student on surgery with me. the only thing that i hated about the rotation was having to see him every morning. he tried to outgun everyone, and it frustrated me to no end. I would have to yell at him (because behaving like a rational adult didnt work with him) about going to cases or going to clinic (we were required to have clinic covered by a med student every day) because he always wanted to go to the library! I mean, we all want to study, but come ON! And then on the other hand, he'd write down the plans for ALL of our patients, so he could go check up on stuff on the rest of the patients that werent his (NOT COOL). luckily he showed up late to rounds anyways and by the end of the 6 weeks still couldnt identify the important values in a chem7 (this was the 2nd to last rotation of med3 too). (he seriously read out the ENTIRE thing on EVERY patient, EVERY day 140, 4.1, 104, 24, 8, 0.9, 96) so essentially he screwed himself over anyways. but it still made the team dynamic all screwy.

So while the rest of us worked together really well and we had each others' backs and made sure each other looked good - this kid screwed up our whole dynamic.

So my best advice is - dont be that kid!

Trying to outgun people only creates a hostile environment. It makes the people who really want to do well on that rotation (cause they want to go into that field) angry, and it makes the rest of the people just feel awkward.

And i think that as long as your team has fun with each other, you'll get a good grade anyways. at least that's what i found out.
and at my school, nearly nobody gets honors (maybe 2 people per rotation) or letter of commendation (maybe 3), so we dont really care about grades anymore. so having fun is the most important part🙂

I thought people who just finished 3rd and 4th year (or anybody really) could post some advice on the do's and dont's of being on the floors.

THIS IS WHAT WORKED FOR ME:

Most medical students make the mistake of thinking that they are competing with other students on the rotation.

In my experience it tends to be that your group --in that rotation -- is competing with previous groups. Attendings and residents often don't really bother to distinguish between students, but do notice when a group of students are particularly good. (Obviously this is not always the case, but I found it often times was.)

My last rotation, I was on a team with one other student who is a good friend, we had done most of 3rd year together and were pretty savy about how to go about our role as "MSIII's." We worked as a unit, always looking out for each other. If one of us was running late the other wrote the notes, we always did the same amount of work. We would both carry the same amount of patients, and go to the same amount of cases.

We never let the other one look bad. If he got pimped, and did'nt know, when I was asked I would'nt know (even if I did) and vice versa. We talked each other up in a sincere way. I would make sure to mention to the team how he had stayed late, or scrubbed in on a long case. He would do the same for me. Often times students work really hard, and the only ones to notice are your fellow students, its on us to let the team know how awesome they are doing.

We kept in touch throughout the day, if there was something cool going on we would make sure to let each other know. We made sure that we arrived and left at the same time.

We made a decision that we were a team within a team. We were always honest, we never lied about wanting to go into fields of medicine we had no intrest in, but we would always be enthusiastic. And we both learned a ton.

Our evals were great, and the attendings commented on what a hard working "group" we were. We had both seen over the year how certian students had been super competitive and down right hostile to their peers. Even if our evals had sucked, we knew that we had acted in an honorable way.

 

[jetproppilot]

I thought people who just finished 3rd and 4th year (or anybody really) could post some advice on the do's and dont's of being on the floors.

THIS IS WHAT WORKED FOR ME:

Most medical students make the mistake of thinking that they are competing with other students on the rotation.

In my experience it tends to be that your group --in that rotation -- is competing with previous groups. Attendings and residents often don't really bother to distinguish between students, but do notice when a group of students are particularly good. (Obviously this is not always the case, but I found it often times was.)

My last rotation, I was on a team with one other student who is a good friend, we had done most of 3rd year together and were pretty savy about how to go about our role as "MSIII's." We worked as a unit, always looking out for each other. If one of us was running late the other wrote the notes, we always did the same amount of work. We would both carry the same amount of patients, and go to the same amount of cases.

We never let the other one look bad. If he got pimped, and did'nt know, when I was asked I would'nt know (even if I did) and vice versa. We talked each other up in a sincere way. I would make sure to mention to the team how he had stayed late, or scrubbed in on a long case. He would do the same for me. Often times students work really hard, and the only ones to notice are your fellow students, its on us to let the team know how awesome they are doing.

We kept in touch throughout the day, if there was something cool going on we would make sure to let each other know. We made sure that we arrived and left at the same time.

We made a decision that we were a team within a team. We were always honest, we never lied about wanting to go into fields of medicine we had no intrest in, but we would always be enthusiastic. And we both learned a ton.

Our evals were great, and the attendings commented on what a hard working "group" we were. We had both seen over the year how certian students had been super competitive and down right hostile to their peers. Even if our evals had sucked, we knew that we had acted in an honorable way.

You and your buddy need to be Department Chairs someday.

And if that doesnt pan out, please call me.

I'm an anesthesiologist in New Orleans.

If I've got a spot open, you've got it.

Doctors like you will always prosper. 👍

 

[tanqueray84]

I really wish our school as done a session during orientation week on how to work in teams. I just finished my first rotation, Ob/Gyn and the Ob part which I took 2nd was the most frustrating month ever. My team was not a team. I realize now that I probably should have been more upfront and spoken my mind but I was afraid that it would be 3 against 1 when nothing they did was rational. I tried being really nice to them at the beginning making sure certain people got to do procedures that I realized I was just "nicely" getting ran over by them. From then on I had to look out for myself. I ended up isolating myself from them and there was just alot of tension everyday. I was just being quiet about how I felt because I didn't want to seem like the "bitch" of the group but by being quiet they probably thought I was a bitch anyway. It was just crazy. Everyone was a nice person, but people were stealing procedures from others, making up strict schedules during call that they never followed, it took them forever to write notes that should have taken 10 minutes and I was soooo ready to get out of there. I feel like now my view of Ob/Gyn is tainted. I just never thought they would listen to me when their ideas didn't make sense. There were two dominating people and one person that would go along with anything. I know I can be dominating and that's why I was trying to be nice in the beginning, but I got screwed because of it. If I really had a team that worked as a team I would be glad to cover someone else's back, but they wouldn't have done that for me so I didn't for them. I just pray my next rotation is better and I learn to speak my mind.