I honored mine, and I
ranked very high for my clinical years in spite of ranking pretty low for basic sciences. My MSPE comments are
glowing--to the point of embarrassing. Obviously, you have to be on time, motivated, positive, imterested. If you see an opportunity to make yourself useful, then make yourself useful. For the love of your chosen diety--do not stop to think about whether it's your job or not. I cannot
count how many times I have heard [other] students say "that's not my job." You're a student. You have no job.
I never went out of my way to impress an attending. I am not going to stroke anyone's ego unless they need it. None of my attendings needed it. On the other hand, I always went out of my way for patients.
If someone cried, I got them a tissue.
If someone was crying and holding their phone, I offered to find the name for them.
If a patient vomitted, I helped clean them up--and I stroked that ego
.
If a patient was cold, I got a warm blanket.
I had a pt that needed to fly home at discharge, but had no ID. I called TSA and found a way.
When our freshly delivered mom had a not numb perineum, I made sure the Dr. noticed.
Except the time we had a 2nd baby with decels,
I coached that mom thru sutures like a pro.
You can argue that these things don't make you a better doctor. That may or may not be true. But the thing is, if you can focus on making things better for each pt you encounter you will learn.
And you will get glowing commemts.
I got A's from attendings who supposedly don't give A's.