How to stand out without looking like a gunner/suck up

[Phrasing]

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So I am in third year and am struggling with this. How do I stand out without looking like a gunner? For example I am on a service now with 2 other students and caught something relatively acute with one of our patients. We were dismissed by the resident to go home soon after but I genuinely wanted to stay and wait for the lab results but I just left instead because the other two students were leaving and I didn’t want to give the perception I was showing anyone up.

 

[mistafab]

Dude - forget about looking like a gunner or sucking up. Work hard, do what you think is right, and give it your best shot. If your team looks good, you look good. Don’t stop yourself from doing stuff just because other people aren’t doing it.

 

[NickNaylor]

If your colleagues get butt hurt about your interest in seeing a case through, that's their problem, not yours. I wouldn't even consider that gunner behavior.

 

[Iz_FtB]

It isn't gunner behavior if your actions would be the same whether someone else was there or not.

 

[radsisrad]

So I am in third year and am struggling with this. How do I stand out without looking like a gunner? For example I am on a service now with 2 other students and caught something relatively acute with one of our patients. We were dismissed by the resident to go home soon after but I genuinely wanted to stay and wait for the lab results but I just left instead because the other two students were leaving and I didn’t want to give the perception I was showing anyone up.

If you were dismissed at 2pm, you don't look (too) bad, if you're truly the one who clearly caught the finding.

If you were dismissed at 5pm, you're gonna look like a gunner no matter what. Well, unless your finding was so valuable that the whole team cheered - in which case, it would be weird to skedaddle.

For any student who doesn't happen to be the hospital hero of the day: when your resident/attending tells you to go home, you go home. Sticking around after that looks weird.

 

[CyrilFiggis]

For any student who doesn't happen to be the hospital hero of the day: when your resident/attending tells you to go home, you go home. Sticking around after that looks weird.

This.

Your job is not to cure everyone in the hospital. Your job is to work hard, know your patients inside and out and exhibit good clinical reasoning and decision making. For that patient, if your differential included whatever this acute finding was, you don't need to see the lab. Your job was to get to that step.

 

[Giovanotto]

I get you OP. Unfortunately, I always act a bit differently when I'm the only student vs. a group of students. I know that there are things I do when I'm the only student that might be off putting to the other students so I try to limit those things because otherwise the entire rotation will be miserable, people will be constantly one-upping each other, and nobody wants that.

 

[Dave1980]

Bring bagels and donuts at the end of the rotation (all students chip in and bring together). You will be a hero.

You can look up that lab tomorrow. Go home when it's time to go home.