OMG What do I do now?

[2legittoquit]

I’m a 4th year med student at an MD program in the US, and I am writing to ask for as much help as you guys can possibly give me. I have no reason to lie about my experiences in this post because that would misconstrue me, and that doesn’t help me deal with my situation. Once again, I appreciate in advance any help that I get.

Here goes. I had just received a failing grade on my last 3rd year rotation based on my clerkship’s subjective evals and it was COMPLETELY unexpected. My shelf grade was fine, statistically better than most who took the test nationally, but absolutely far from failing (10%ile). However, the comments written in the evaluation are exaggerated, demeaning, and written by people who didn’t have any idea of my performance at all. I won’t write the whole thing verbatim, but to summarize, the letter clearly states, and in many cases re-states:

-that I am never on time, and lacked: professionalism, motivation, interest, responsibility, general knowledge, and medical knowledge base, compassion, professionalism, the ability to be a team player or individual, follow basic instructions

-that attendings didn’t want to work with me based on poor interest, that I didn’t conduct myself as a student.

- that I’m not up to the level of 3rd years, not ready for 4th year, that my future in medicine is a concern, and that I would not be a good resident or physician in whatever specialty I consider

- furthermore, I didn’t complete all of the required procedures/encounters

Obviously, this is devastating. There are no positive comments at all in the eval, just one attack after another, with no supporting evidence, claiming that there are no good qualities to myself as a medical student. Prior to receiving this, I considered myself a fairly strong candidate for most competitive specialties. I passed all my preclinicals, scored ~250 on step 1, and got all H/HP throughout 3rd year. Every sentence in every one of my evaluations previously has been positive, I’ve never had a mention of unprofessionalism, or questions in my ability to act as a student/future physician, ever. Not verbally, not written. I can safely claim that everything that was written in this last evaluation is the opposite of what was written previously. But i was still the same student as in all my previous rotations.

I don’t cry wolf and I don’t complain about petty things. I never have throughout med school. But I know that what was written in this evaluation was exaggerated, false, or misconstrued. It would take a lot of pages for me to thoroughly defend myself, I’ll skip the details. My problem is that I was blindsided by these comments and I really feel that these comments are false – especially the encounters/requirements, which I have logs of. The only one that is legitimate was my tardiness, which wasn’t even that extreme or as consistent as it was portrayed - it was never, ever by more than a few minutes. If they wanted to ding me on that, fine, I can accept it, and I wouldn’t complain. But the rest of the comments are baseless and false.

Additionally, there was a substantial lack of feedback throughout the rotation. I was never given a mid-term evaluation, or any evaluation during the rotation at all, and definitely never told that I was apparently acting in a way that would lead to my failure. I finally did get feedback by the site director on the very last day of the rotation, who said that some residents and another attending wanted me to fail (which was a shock), but that he would pass me. He gave me the reasons why I was in that position based on what the residents told him, but with this happening on the last day, I obviously couldn’t change anything. And he technically he did pass me, numerically, but on the other hand wrote a page long eval on how bad of a student I was, which the clerkship director then based the failing grade on.

So my question now is what am I supposed to do? After submitting the grades, the clerkship director left for 3 weeks. I contacted the dean of student affairs, but got redirected back to the clerkship director saying that i would need to start there, with some reassurance that the dean’s letter won’t go out until Nov 1st, which is supposedly enough time to deal with this. But I’m not so sure. If it comes to making up the course, there isn’t enough time to make up a 6 week rotation between when the clerkship director gets back in late August and Nov 1st because I have to do a crucial away rotation throughout September. I have a meeting with one of the ombudspersons tomorrow but I really am not sure if that will help at all.

I feel that as a student, I don’t have a leg to stand on to contest the eval because it’s my word vs theirs, and my school has shown in past cases that it is not receptive to situations similar to mine. With this last evaluation going on the dean’s letter I don’t know what will become of my academic career anymore. My medical career as I once knew it is probably f-ed, and I’m not sure what else i can do.

Once again, any advice would be helpful.

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[Mac4]

The only one that is legitimate was my tardiness, which wasn’t even that extreme or as consistent as it was portrayed - it was never, ever by more than a few minutes. If they wanted to ding me on that, fine, I can accept it, and I wouldn’t complain. But the rest of the comments are baseless and false.

Unfortunately, you simply can NOT do that as a medical student in a core rotation. Once people start to look for you or try to figure out where you are, it is pretty much over for your clinical performance.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

I'm a 4th year med student at an MD program in the US, and I am writing to ask for as much help as you guys can possibly give me. I have no reason to lie about my experiences in this post because that would misconstrue me, and that doesn't help me deal with my situation. Once again, I appreciate in advance any help that I get.

Here goes. I had just received a failing grade on my last 3rd year rotation based on my clerkship's subjective evals and it was COMPLETELY unexpected. My shelf grade was fine, statistically better than most who took the test nationally, but absolutely far from failing (10%ile). However, the comments written in the evaluation are exaggerated, demeaning, and written by people who didn't have any idea of my performance at all. I won't write the whole thing verbatim, but to summarize, the letter clearly states, and in many cases re-states:

-that I am never on time, and lacked: professionalism, motivation, interest, responsibility, general knowledge, and medical knowledge base, compassion, professionalism, the ability to be a team player or individual, follow basic instructions

-that attendings didn't want to work with me based on poor interest, that I didn't conduct myself as a student.

- that I'm not up to the level of 3rd years, not ready for 4th year, that my future in medicine is a concern, and that I would not be a good resident or physician in whatever specialty I consider

- furthermore, I didn't complete all of the required procedures/encounters

Obviously, this is devastating. There are no positive comments at all in the eval, just one attack after another, with no supporting evidence, claiming that there are no good qualities to myself as a medical student. Prior to receiving this, I considered myself a fairly strong candidate for most competitive specialties. I passed all my preclinicals, scored ~250 on step 1, and got all H/HP throughout 3rd year. Every sentence in every one of my evaluations previously has been positive, I've never had a mention of unprofessionalism, or questions in my ability to act as a student/future physician, ever. Not verbally, not written. I can safely claim that everything that was written in this last evaluation is the opposite of what was written previously. But i was still the same student as in all my previous rotations.

I don't cry wolf and I don't complain about petty things. I never have throughout med school. But I know that what was written in this evaluation was exaggerated, false, or misconstrued. It would take a lot of pages for me to thoroughly defend myself, I'll skip the details. My problem is that I was blindsided by these comments and I really feel that these comments are false – especially the encounters/requirements, which I have logs of. The only one that is legitimate was my tardiness, which wasn't even that extreme or as consistent as it was portrayed - it was never, ever by more than a few minutes. If they wanted to ding me on that, fine, I can accept it, and I wouldn't complain. But the rest of the comments are baseless and false.

Additionally, there was a substantial lack of feedback throughout the rotation. I was never given a mid-term evaluation, or any evaluation during the rotation at all, and definitely never told that I was apparently acting in a way that would lead to my failure. I finally did get feedback by the site director on the very last day of the rotation, who said that some residents and another attending wanted me to fail (which was a shock), but that he would pass me. He gave me the reasons why I was in that position based on what the residents told him, but with this happening on the last day, I obviously couldn't change anything. And he technically he did pass me, numerically, but on the other hand wrote a page long eval on how bad of a student I was, which the clerkship director then based the failing grade on.

So my question now is what am I supposed to do? After submitting the grades, the clerkship director left for 3 weeks. I contacted the dean of student affairs, but got redirected back to the clerkship director saying that i would need to start there, with some reassurance that the dean's letter won't go out until Nov 1st, which is supposedly enough time to deal with this. But I'm not so sure. If it comes to making up the course, there isn't enough time to make up a 6 week rotation between when the clerkship director gets back in late August and Nov 1st because I have to do a crucial away rotation throughout September. I have a meeting with one of the ombudspersons tomorrow but I really am not sure if that will help at all.

I feel that as a student, I don't have a leg to stand on to contest the eval because it's my word vs theirs, and my school has shown in past cases that it is not receptive to situations similar to mine. With this last evaluation going on the dean's letter I don't know what will become of my academic career anymore. My medical career as I once knew it is probably f-ed, and I'm not sure what else i can do.

Once again, any advice would be helpful.

This sounds so strange. You had honors and high passes in other clinical rotations and a Step 1 of 250.

I don't think being tardy a few minutes, even repeatedly, is a basis for a rational resident or attending to develop such feelings of antipathy.

I feel like there must be something else going on here, like a particularly bad relationship with a resident who then poisoned others' opinions of you. Or massive and repeated tardiness which bled over into other issues like being unable to present. Or just complete and total lack of interest in this particular rotation.

I could be wrong on this, but I would think that even if this evaluation stays, the others should weigh as a broader reflection of your character and potential. The 250 Step 1 sort of supports the notion that you have the basic science down.

Is this rotation in a field you are interested in going into, or is it in surgery or IM (which are the two other clerkships that are most important to do well on)?

 

[kenshin1]

Obviously I do not know you and you may be a nice person but I highly doubt that the residents and attendings went out of their way to malign you. Your behavior on the rotation clearly rubbed them the wrong way. I don't think you can make this go away. Your best bet is to address the behavior issues as best as you can , and have a cogent response ready for interviews. Most importantly do not be so defensive

 

[2legittoquit]

Unfortunately, you simply can NOT do that as a medical student in a core rotation. Once people start to look for you or try to figure out where you are, it is pretty much over for your clinical performance.

You make a good point, but it really was not egregious. I had been showing up when signouts are scheduled to happen and sometimes missing 1-2 patients, because the residents chose to start early, but i was never more than 5 minutes late, and i never missed signouts. I should have been there earlier, i agree, but I was never reprimanded for this until the very end of the rotation so I never knew it was such a significant problem. I can definitely accept criticism on an eval saying that i displayed lack of interest with evidence that i was late.

However, tardiness aside, I don't feel that the rest of the letter can be seen as an acceptable form of evaluation.

 

[2legittoquit]

This sounds so strange. You had honors and high passes in other clinical rotations and a Step 1 of 250.

I don't think being tardy a few minutes, even repeatedly, is a basis for a rational resident or attending to develop such feelings of antipathy.

I feel like there must be something else going on here, like a particularly bad relationship with a resident who then poisoned others' opinions of you. Or massive and repeated tardiness which bled over into other issues like being unable to present. Or just complete and total lack of interest in this particular rotation.

I could be wrong on this, but I would think that even if this evaluation stays, the others should weigh as a broader reflection of your character and potential. The 250 Step 1 sort of supports the notion that you have the basic science down.

Is this rotation in a field you are interested in going into, or is it in surgery or IM (which are the two other clerkships that are most important to do well on)?

I remember that one of the 5-6 total pimp questions i had in the course of the 6 weeks was what artery runs through the round ligament (simpson's? i had to look it up). And the resident was not very accommodating when i didn't know. So that should give you an idea of what clerkship it was. Thankfully it wasnt medicine or surgery. I did well in both of those.

No, it wasn't a field i was interested in pursuing, but it definitely wasnt the first clerkship that i've not been interested in making a career. The only difference was that I was consistently ignored by residents during this rotation in spite of consistently asking if they wanted help or not, if i could do anything, etc. - all the things that I would normally do to help get some work done. Something was odd, but i wasn't sure what it was. During down time, I ended up reading review books, because the residents or attendings appear disappeared into their call-rooms and i definitely wasn't learning from them when that was happening. Maybe i should have been doing something else, i don't know what they expected.

I agree that there must have been some bad blood behind the scenes. I don't know what the problem was. I wish that at some point this was communicated to me. During the course of the clerkship, i had messaged the site director for feedback and never received anything in return, and no one else gave me negative feedback, so i never thought anything like this was happening. Until the very last day.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

I remember that one of the 5-6 total pimp questions i had in the course of the 6 weeks was what artery runs through the round ligament (simpson's? i had to look it up). And the resident was not very accommodating when i didn't know. So that should give you an idea of what clerkship it was. Thankfully it wasnt medicine or surgery. I did well in both of those.

No, it wasn't a field i was interested in pursuing, but it definitely wasnt the first clerkship that i've not been interested in making a career. The only difference was that I was consistently ignored by residents during this rotation in spite of consistently asking if they wanted help or not, if i could do anything, etc. - all the things that I would normally do to help get some work done. Something was odd, but i wasn't sure what it was. During down time, I ended up reading review books, because the residents or attendings appear disappeared into their call-rooms and i definitely wasn't learning from them when that was happening. Maybe i should have been doing something else, i don't know what they expected.

I agree that there must have been some bad blood behind the scenes. I don't know what the problem was. I wish that at some point this was communicated to me. During the course of the clerkship, i had messaged the site director for feedback and never received anything in return, and no one else gave me negative feedback, so i never thought anything like this was happening. Until the very last day.

Sounds like Ob/Gyn. If you had to mess up any particular core clerkship (and weren't going into that field), it would have to be psych or ob/gyn. Psych, because its different enough from other branches of medicine that if you excel at the others and suck at psych or vice versa they have relatively little bearing on each other. Ob/gyn because they are catty psychos.

If your IM and surgery and field-you-intend-to-go-into and most other clerkship grades are good or great, I can't imagine this ob/gyn evaluation being damaging enough to completely derail your career.

 

[2legittoquit]

Sounds like Ob/Gyn. If you had to mess up any particular core clerkship (and weren't going into that field), it would have to be psych or ob/gyn. Psych, because its different enough from other branches of medicine that if you excel at the others and suck at psych or vice versa they have relatively little bearing on each other. Ob/gyn because they are catty psychos.

If your IM and surgery and field-you-intend-to-go-into and most other clerkship grades are good or great, I can't imagine this ob/gyn evaluation being damaging enough to completely derail your career.

I agree, it could have been a more important clerkship and you pretty much nailed the personality of this one.

But, this letter is just plain awful and I dont know how you could write a worse one if you wanted to derail a career. On the other hand, just the sheer absurdity of how badly the letter depicts me vs other clerkships might devalue it. Its that bad.

What i'd really like to know is how to deal with it in different fronts:

1. what rights do i have to protest this, becuase there is no way everything written can possibly be true.

2. how do i compensate for the character assasination in other parts of my residency application? i realize i can talk about it in interviews, but there has to be other ways. I've considered bringing it up with my LOR writers so that they can address it.

3. what to do about remediation?

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

I agree, it could have been a more important clerkship and you pretty much nailed the personality of this one.

But, this letter is just plain awful and I dont know how you could write a worse one if you wanted to derail a career. On the other hand, just the sheer absurdity of how badly the letter depicts me vs other clerkships might devalue it. Its that bad.

What i'd really like to know is how to deal with it in different fronts:

1. what rights do i have to protest this, becuase there is no way everything written can possibly be true.

2. how do i compensate for the character assasination in other parts of my residency application? i realize i can talk about it in interviews, but there has to be other ways. I've considered bringing it up with my LOR writers so that they can address it.

3. what to do about remediation?

I'm not an expert since I haven't done most of third year yet, so can only speak to what I find sensible.

1.) I would protest to the director and basically beg to get this changed to a low pass and would defend against some of those comments.

2.) Excel in all other clerkships and electives and prove that this is a fluke and reflects more on their insanity than your bad behavior.

3.) Be sure you get to rotate in a completely different hospital and completely different group. Keep a low profile during remediation, correct all the things you can (like being on time) and try not to have yourself discussed by other residents/attendings, because it sounds like they enjoy comparing notes and destroying people based at least in part on hearsay.

I spoke to a fellow classmate who mentioned that when one ob/gyn resident got mad at him, she told the others and they all became mad along with her.

 

[peppy]

I'm sorry to hear this happened to you. It is really unfair that you were blindsided with something like this at the end when you thought you were doing fine. It is quite unkind to just let someone fail a rotation without trying to help the person learn and improve before it's too late.

I would not bring this up with your letter writers. You never know if that might backfire by making them think that there must be something to the allegations. If you're going into an unrelated field, I think how much this hurts you depends on how competitive that other field is. If you're going for something really competitive, where they would use any reason to weed someone out, then it might be a bigger deal than if you're going for an average competitiveness field where they might be more understanding about how arbitrary personality conflicts can sometimes lead to bad evaluations.

I would definitely make some copies of those logs you have and use that to try to talk to the people in charge about how you think there has been a "misunderstanding" (I would try to avoid sounding angry about it even though I'm sure you are). I also definitely agree that if you do end up having to make up the ob/gyn rotation, I would ask them about where else you can do it.
I can believe that this might be a case of someone who takes tardiness very seriously getting all worked up over that and talking to everyone else about how "unprofessional" and "uninterested" you were based on that. Still, that does seem like a serious overreaction to me.

 

[IndyXRT]

I think the advice given above is sound. Do what you can to deal with the situation without being too confrontational. It's better to have the bad evaluation than to let an argument over it derail your 4th year. If this truly is as big an outlier as you say it is, it may be ignored because of its inconsistency with the rest of your record (if I saw an applicant with good step I score, mostly Honors and HP, and then this one horrible evaluation, I'd probably choose to ignore the outlier, although I might bring it up in the interview to see what you had to say).

 

[2legittoquit]

Thanks to all the replies so far. I agree, i'm not trying to be overly aggressive, but i will stick to my argument that i have been inappropriately evaluated.

There is another angle to the story. The course syllabus has a section devoted to "evaluation of student professional behavior", stating that concerns regarding professional behavior are grouped into 4 categories:

unmet professional responsibility
lack of effort toward self-improvement and adaptability
diminished relationships with patients and families
diminished relationships with members of the health care team

If any behavior is displayed fitting the above categories, a 4 step process notifying the student "will be initiated", which i'll just summarize by saying that it involves both verbal and written warnings from the clerkship director.

Since my letter addresses concerns fitting those 4 categories, and none of the following steps were done, it seems that I'm justified in arguing that the correct due process was ignored. But what then?

 

[sarcopenia]

I had a similar thing happen during medical school.

Paeds rotation, there was one resident, who was formerly a nurse (not sure if this was relevant or not, but it did seem to give her a different style of doing thigns), who was universally hated by the med students. She would literally peer over our shoulders as we were writing a progress note or orders. If she didn't like what she saw, she would rip the chart out of our hands, cross out the note, remove it from the binder, crumple it up, throw it away, etc and then give an extremely patronizing rant (all in earshot of whoever was within 10 m of the nursing station). She hated me the most, because after doing this to me the first time, I made sure to anticipate subsequent "attacks," holding onto the chart with an iron grip (causing her to almost slip and fall). Of the other 3 med students on the rotation, 2 managed to avoid her (by literally ducking into patient rooms or washrooms if they saw her coming), but 1 was not so lucky. That girl, who is a very conscientious and caring individual, got dinged for "lack of clinical judgement" because she did not know the doses off the top of her head for amp and gent for empirical treatment of ? meningitis in an infant. I mean, WTF? You know presumed dx, and tx, and you look up the dose ... ESPECIALLY when it comes to kids, where most of the doses are per bodyweight or per body surface area.

Neither of us failed the rotation, our other in-rotation evals were good, but we did get some nasty comments due to the "poisoning" of 1 or 2 of the attendings by this resident.

I responded to this by writing a very long and detailed commentary about the rotation, and the offending resident. I began by listing all of the positive qualities of the resident (she was very intelligent, very knowledgeable, worked like a machine, which was all true) ... I then ended by saying how much of a b--ch she was to us medical students, how we would break into a cold sweat at the mere sight of her, have nightmares, etc. It didn't help me or the other medical student, BUT ... the next batch of medical students rotating with her reported back to us that she was being "ridiculously and awkwardly nice" to them, going so far as to buy donuts / muffins for the team once or twice per week, etc.

If you can have an attitude of "honest consternation," and express a sincerity to "get to the bottom of things" it can go a long way. If you can say something like, "I wonder if this has something to do with an unfortunate disagreement I had with resident X" ... it may or may not be advisable. You might float the statement out, judge the facial reaction of the recipient party (the attending who dinged you or the clerkship director), and decide whether or not to elaborate.

On procedural grounds, in many programs (at least in Canada), you CANNOT fail a rotation without having received a negative interim evaluation. It's a bit like when the FBI does a search without a warrant. Even if the crap that's uncovered could and should put you away for 10 years, if the evidence was wrongly acquired, the case it thrown out. You may be able to stage an appeal. I know somebody in my medical school who staged an appeal, with the understanding that:

- if the appeal succeeded, there would be vindication
- if the appeal failed at an early/low level, it could be taken further/higher (although the likelihood of it succeeding would be diminished, and obviously the potential for career repercussions due to lag / scheduling issues would be greater either way)
- if the appeal failed at an early/low level, it could be cancelled, and the student could then do some kind of remediation so that the negative mark on the record, although not stricken down, would be considered "fixed" i.e. remediated.

Definitely, if I were you, I'd consider the above, and read over any relevant clerkship / medical school handbooks you might have.

Good Luck...

 

[Rendar5]

everyone's given decent advice so far. If you need to retake it, you need to make sure that you're 5 minutes early every single day, you need to be one of the first people at signout/morning rounds.

Additionally, you need copies of all procedural logs, you need a copy of the e-mail you sent asking for mid-course feedback as proof that you were not given the opportunity to improve on your deficiences despite your personal desire for improvement. And if you have to deal with any disciplinary meeting/stuff, say as little as possible, don't try to bring up everything and defend everything. You have the entire year's worth of good evals and good grades, and those two things I mentioned as defense, discuss the tardiness as little as possible because you don't have much defense there. If the team is meeting 5 minutes before they said they would, you needed to recognize that and adjust accordingly. It may not be fair, but it's still not an excuse.

I personally also have tardiness issues, and have had bad marks because of it and since then i have struggled to always be a bit early (and I still fail sometimes, but it's much improved)

 

[filter07]

I also had an annoying experience on OB/GYN. Your story definitely isn't the first of its kind. OB/GYN residents can sometimes have a reputation for ganging up on whoever they don't like and becoming the most vindictive psychos ever. I don't have specific advice but I thought I'd give you at least some moral support.

It gets better in residency though. In residency I've had negative (but rare) comments by medical students, which the chairman, program director, and I just laugh about.

 

[Legion560]

To echo the others, I have been on the recieving end during my ob/gyn rotation in medical school. The situation is similar to yours where I had a resident pick on me for no reason. I was on time, I worked my ass off, stayed after sign out to get work done and to help the team-yet I end up with a bad eval. This particular resident picked on other students as well. In the future, DOCUMENT everything. After the incident, go and type up a little Word document listing the date, individuals involved, the patient (include MRN so that it can be tracked and referenced later) and what happened. Do this every time without exception. At the end of a hellish rotation you will have accumulated several of these things which you can use in your defense. Its easy to say to your dean "I was wronged" but your complaint will carry more weight if you have specific examples. The more detailed you can make these "incident reports" the more ground you have to stand on. Protect yourself.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

To echo the others, I have been on the recieving end during my ob/gyn rotation in medical school. The situation is similar to yours where I had a resident pick on me for no reason. I was on time, I worked my ass off, stayed after sign out to get work done and to help the team-yet I end up with a bad eval. This particular resident picked on other students as well. In the future, DOCUMENT everything. After the incident, go and type up a little Word document listing the date, individuals involved, the patient (include MRN so that it can be tracked and referenced later) and what happened. Do this every time without exception. At the end of a hellish rotation you will have accumulated several of these things which you can use in your defense. Its easy to say to your dean "I was wronged" but your complaint will carry more weight if you have specific examples. The more detailed you can make these "incident reports" the more ground you have to stand on. Protect yourself.

That's a good idea. You want to be a non-complainer during the rotation (assuming you have to repeat it), but also document everything, so that you can defend yourself if poor evaluations come in.

An aside: any tips on navigating malignant residents, especially in Ob/Gyn? It seems that even quiet soft-spoken people are not immune to this - perhaps even attract negative attention due to "giving themselves airs."

 

[docdaname]

To echo the others, I have been on the recieving end during my ob/gyn rotation in medical school. The situation is similar to yours where I had a resident pick on me for no reason. I was on time, I worked my ass off, stayed after sign out to get work done and to help the team-yet I end up with a bad eval. This particular resident picked on other students as well. In the future, DOCUMENT everything. After the incident, go and type up a little Word document listing the date, individuals involved, the patient (include MRN so that it can be tracked and referenced later) and what happened. Do this every time without exception. At the end of a hellish rotation you will have accumulated several of these things which you can use in your defense. Its easy to say to your dean "I was wronged" but your complaint will carry more weight if you have specific examples. The more detailed you can make these "incident reports" the more ground you have to stand on. Protect yourself.

man what is it about ob/gyn that causes people at every institution to have universally similar experiences? seriously. its ridiculous. At my institution there was a resident who gave everyone horrible emails, similar to the op, about how unprofessional they were, disinterested, etc. This person gave them to everyone. including people who said they never worked them. Well fortunately people complained and the coordinator threw them all out, and didnt let this resident evaluate students anymore

 

[2legittoquit]

Thanks everybody for the support!

Yes, I am now realizing how important it is to document and keep a paper trail of everything in medical school, and probably in residency as well. It isn't right that this should even be necessary, but not everything or everyone is fair. You need to be prepared to protect yourself if siht hits the fan as much as possible. I wish there was a reality TV show for my rotation so i could get video evidence as well .

I have been assembling as much evidence as I can. Yes, I did print out the email asking for feedback. The site director even replied to it the email showing that he had read it, although it was to answer the other question in the email. The logs are no problem, double checked and done. I have all my evals and grades from prior clerkships copied. I'm also working on writing rebuttals to the vague criticism in the letter using specific examples.

Also, I talked with the other students at the same site and time interval where i was, although i didn't tell them that i had failed, or what was on my eval. They too expressed lots of concern regarding the amount of unprofessionalism displayed by the site director and residents in regards to evaluation, expectations during the clerkship, and feedback. They would be willing to tell their stories as well. This is probably the most important evidence i have. However, not sure how i can present their experiences, still working on that.

Should it come to it, I found out that I will not have to repeat that clerkship immediately, and that I will be able to do my away rotation in September, so that's good as well. I'd then remediate the clerkship in october. Minor victory.

I'm scheduling a meeting with the dean of student affairs to discuss the implications of all this on my applications next week.

Keep the advice flowing guys. Thanks again.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

A couple of thoughts:

1. Being regularly tardy is completely unacceptable, IMHO. It sets a bad tone for the whole rotation. Why should I bother staying later to teach you anything if you don't bother coming in on time? This is the last rotation of the year -- you should know this without being told.

2. Being late started a cycle of: Student late --> Not interested / Not working hard --> exclude from team work, because unreliable --> student didn't do anything --> poor performance --> Lots of bad comments --> failing grade.

3. The fact that this comes as a surprise to you is not good. It should have been abundantly clear, by the behavior of the residents around you, that something was clearly wrong. It appears that you missed the non verbal communication coming from the residents.

4. The fact that you did well on other rotations means nothing to me, and shouldn't be part of the discussion. Just because you did well then doesn't mean that you can't screw up now.

5. What to "do" next is unclear. As others have mentioned, there is probably a process in your Student Handbook about how these things are handled. You can argue that you should get a passing grade based upon a lack of mid block feedback. Even so, what is the dean to do with all of the comments? Simply ignore them? By your description they are coming from multiple people, perhaps even all of your evaluators. Although it's possible that you were "ganged up" on by them, it's also possible that you simply rubbed them all the wrong way.

Was this tardiness issue new? Were you late to all of your other rotations on a regular basis? If not, why start now?

 

[2legittoquit]

A couple of thoughts:

1. Being regularly tardy is completely unacceptable, IMHO. It sets a bad tone for the whole rotation. Why should I bother staying later to teach you anything if you don't bother coming in on time? This is the last rotation of the year -- you should know this without being told.

I agree, it can be viewed like this. Tardyness in this case was truthfully 2-3 minutes, which is ok for most, not ok for others. This was obviously the latter category for this rotation. But more than 0 minutes late is technically late, and i have to accept that. I also understand the philosophy of what you are saying.

2. Being late started a cycle of: Student late --> Not interested / Not working hard --> exclude from team work, because unreliable --> student didn't do anything --> poor performance --> Lots of bad comments --> failing grade.

I suppose this could have happened, I'll never know. However, the other students at the same rotation had a similar experience of being excluded and not being given clear expectations by the residents.

3. The fact that this comes as a surprise to you is not good. It should have been abundantly clear, by the behavior of the residents around you, that something was clearly wrong. It appears that you missed the non verbal communication coming from the residents.

I think that I have learned how to read residents through my clerkships, and doing well on other rotations speaks some truth to that. I have worked with residents who aren't always interested in teaching students all the time,and that was ok. I have worked with residents who don't like to be followed all the time. I can usually tell when they just want to get some work done or be alone and want you to find your own thing to do. During this rotation, i was consistently asking my resident for what to do during down time, where i should be, etc. because there was no communication in what to do. The response was usually along the lines of "nothing, i can take care of it, its ok". Tough to read into that one. Telling someone that and then writing about how they didn't do what you wanted is really underhanded.

4. The fact that you did well on other rotations means nothing to me, and shouldn't be part of the discussion. Just because you did well then doesn't mean that you can't screw up now.

Technically, you are correct. I think its difficult to believe that a students professionalism or compassion would vary this much between 2 rotations.

5. What to "do" next is unclear. As others have mentioned, there is probably a process in your Student Handbook about how these things are handled. You can argue that you should get a passing grade based upon a lack of mid block feedback. Even so, what is the dean to do with all of the comments? Simply ignore them? By your description they are coming from multiple people, perhaps even all of your evaluators. Although it's possible that you were "ganged up" on by them, it's also possible that you simply rubbed them all the wrong way.

Good question, and I don't have a good answer right now. I dont know how my evaluations looked. I also don't know if all the attendings i rotated with evaluated me. I at least felt that i got along fairly well with the majority, though not all, of them.

Was this tardiness issue new? Were you late to all of your other rotations on a regular basis? If not, why start now?

It is new. All my past evals point out how prompt i am. I guess i didn't realize how harshly they were critiquing me.

 

[maceo]

A couple of thoughts:

3. The fact that this comes as a surprise to you is not good. It should have been abundantly clear, by the behavior of the residents around you, that something was clearly wrong. It appears that you missed the non verbal communication coming from the residents.
?

there lay the problem prof knoitall, the fact that he failed is as much his problem then it is the schools problem. Clear interval evals should have avoided this. Expectation list should have avoided this. It does nothing for the student to fail him at the end and give him all his evals at the end. He should have had ample time for remediation throughout the rotation. If not it is theprogram directors fault and the schools fault and he should sue the school and report the the counci on medical education. this story is an old story and it will continue to be told by people over and over and over

 

[VMSmith]

2. Being late started a cycle of: Student late --> Not interested / Not working hard --> exclude from team work, because unreliable --> student didn't do anything --> poor performance --> Lots of bad comments --> failing grade.

While this is probably true, I don't think it excuses the way the situation was handled by the attendings and residents the OP worked with.

Why do we accept this form of "evaluation" in medicine? A student goes through a rotation with no feedback whatsoever, is not told that he/she is not meeting expectations, and is subsequently given a failing grade with tons of negative comments after the rotation ends and he/she has no way of correcting the behavior.

Maybe because in medical school we're accustomed to keeping our mouths shut, not complaining or confronting anyone about anything out of fear that what we say will hurt our grades, and using anonymous end-of-rotation evaluations to say what we really felt about a course/rotation.

Midterm evaluations should be mandatory, especially for a student in danger of failing.

On the other hand, to the OP, the fact that you were regularly tardy is inexcusable, especially to a patient-care activity like sign-out. That says a ton about how little you cared about the rotation right there, and I would be pretty pissed at you too if you were my student.

 

[docdaname]

there lay the problem prof knoitall, the fact that he failed is as much his problem then it is the schools problem. Clear interval evals should have avoided this. Expectation list should have avoided this. It does nothing for the student to fail him at the end and give him all his evals at the end. He should have had ample time for remediation throughout the rotation. If not it is theprogram directors fault and the schools fault and he should sue the school and report the the counci on medical education. this story is an old story and it will continue to be told by people over and over and over

at my program our deans made it very clear that it was our responsibility to make sure a mid block eval was filled out. We were pretty much told that if at the end of the rotation if we were unhappy with out grade, if there was no mid rotation eval, there was no argument. If anything it was to protect us...so if you got a failing grade, but your mid rotation eval didnt correlate....you had a chance to change it. moral of the story for all the med students out there...always make sure you have a mid rotation eval filled out.

 

[Acherona]

failing someone for tardiness is a tad excessive. Yea it's a little inconsiderate to be late but it definitely is no basis for saying someone has poor potential to be a physician. What you do once you get there is much more important. In fact if you are liked in the rotation people will barely notice/care if you are a few minutes late. Sounds like you were just another med student screwed by the system, welcome to clerkship.

I would just keep trying to fight it, harp on the fact that you did well in the past and you were never told there was a problem. They can maybe give you some negative comments but they can't fail you if nobody ever gave you a heads-up and I'm sure your clerkship director will be reasonable about this. If necessary go to the people who wrote the comments and ask them to provide you with specific examples to support their comments. It's amazing how these malicious people will misconstrue behavior. I was blackballed on my third year medicine rotation, accused of "not taking good care of my patients". Meanwhile, I was crosscovering 4 new patients a day for almost two weeks because nobody had bothered to assign me my own patients and when I pointed this out they backed off a little. The attending also accused me of having poor clinical judgement based on the fact that I seemed not to take a patient's Temp seriously enough. He simply didn't know I had seen the pt right away and discussed the issue with the resident. They assume the worst about you if they don't like you (which, like aPD said, may have happened early on when you made a bad impression causing a downward spiral). Don't let them screw you!

 

[filter07]

Even if you have bad comments, having a passing grade is a huge benefit over a fail. Some specialties will more or less laugh off negative comments from OB/GYN. Nobody will laugh off a fail grade.

 

[HerBigBrownEyes]

A couple of thoughts:

1. Being regularly tardy is completely unacceptable, IMHO. It sets a bad tone for the whole rotation. Why should I bother staying later to teach you anything if you don't bother coming in on time? This is the last rotation of the year -- you should know this without being told.

2. Being late started a cycle of: Student late --> Not interested / Not working hard --> exclude from team work, because unreliable --> student didn't do anything --> poor performance --> Lots of bad comments --> failing grade.

3. The fact that this comes as a surprise to you is not good. It should have been abundantly clear, by the behavior of the residents around you, that something was clearly wrong. It appears that you missed the non verbal communication coming from the residents.

4. The fact that you did well on other rotations means nothing to me, and shouldn't be part of the discussion. Just because you did well then doesn't mean that you can't screw up now.

5. What to "do" next is unclear. As others have mentioned, there is probably a process in your Student Handbook about how these things are handled. You can argue that you should get a passing grade based upon a lack of mid block feedback. Even so, what is the dean to do with all of the comments? Simply ignore them? By your description they are coming from multiple people, perhaps even all of your evaluators. Although it's possible that you were "ganged up" on by them, it's also possible that you simply rubbed them all the wrong way.

Was this tardiness issue new? Were you late to all of your other rotations on a regular basis? If not, why start now?

Ouch! I think this is too harsh on the OP. We all make mistakes from time to time. Who hasn't been a few minutes late to something important? Anyway, I hardly see that as a reason to FAIL someone. Unfortunately, I think this situation occurs all too often in ob/gyn. It actually occurred at my med school to many HIGHLY qualified med students (one had received an Honors in every other clerkship). For her, it honestly was that she was disliked by the female residents because she was much more attractive than any of them. Interestingly, I was a member of the student complaint committee. When I tried to bring up this issue, I was literally yelled at for "making stuff up" and that it was the student's fault by an administrator. I was also told that I was probably just bitter at getting a poor evaluation. Turns out, I had honored the rotation with outstanding evaluations. It's very easy to blame the student in these situations. My heart goes out to the OP. You probably did not do anything wrong, just were the target of the bitterness and nastiness of the residents. I think wonderful evaluations in other clerkships show that you are a good student. Again, I wouldn't let this bother you personally too much. Just be glad you won't be going into ob/gyn!!!

 

[Winged Scapula]

Ouch! I think this is too harsh on the OP. We all make mistakes from time to time.

Trouble was, it wasn't "time to time" for the OP. It was reportedly several times on the same rotation.

Who hasn't been a few minutes late to something important? Anyway, I hardly see that as a reason to FAIL someone.

I agree, not the sole reason to fail someone, but I think students need to realize that some attendings do take tardiness very seriously, and as a reflection of your overall work ethic.

I was chastized by my Vascular Surgery attending as an intern for being late. Like the OP, I was there at 6:01 or 6:03, but in this attending's mind, late is late and was unacceptable. He liked me, so I did well otherwise, but he made it clear that when I returned to his rotation later in the year he would expect me to NEVER be late.

Unfortunately, I think this situation occurs all too often in ob/gyn. It actually occurred at my med school to many HIGHLY qualified med students (one had received an Honors in every other clerkship). For her, it honestly was that she was disliked by the female residents because she was much more attractive than any of them.

Really? Are you female? This sounds like something men make up about women. How do you know that was the case? Did the Ob-Gyn residents admit that?

I'm not a bad looking woman and I am not aware of ever being disliked because I was better looking than other women in the group. As a matter of fact, most people like being around good looking people, as long as they are personable and friendly.

I would think that most women (even the stereotypical unpleasant Ob-Gyn resident) are above disliking someone solely for their looks. Envious? Perhaps, but to outrightly dislike someone and evaluate them poorly because of their looks (and nothing else), seems a bit improbable and smacks of "she doth protest too much" on the part of your colleague. This isn't High School or Mean Girls, is it?

It's very easy to blame the student in these situations. My heart goes out to the OP. You probably did not do anything wrong, just were the target of the bitterness and nastiness of the residents. I think wonderful evaluations in other clerkships show that you are a good student. Again, I wouldn't let this bother you personally too much. Just be glad you won't be going into ob/gyn!!!

It is easy to blame the student here and I agree that the OP has gotten the shaft. No mid-term evaluation, no "talking to", etc trump the fact that he was admittedly late, that he may not have been sensitive to cues from the residents and faculty that he was doing poorly.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

Trouble was, it wasn't "time to time" for the OP. It was reportedly several times on the same rotation.



I agree, not the sole reason to fail someone, but I think students need to realize that some attendings do take tardiness very seriously, and as a reflection of your overall work ethic.

I was chastized by my Vascular Surgery attending as an intern for being late. Like the OP, I was there at 6:01 or 6:03, but in this attending's mind, late is late and was unacceptable. He liked me, so I did well otherwise, but he made it clear that when I returned to his rotation later in the year he would expect me to NEVER be late.



Really? Are you female? This sounds like something men make up about women. How do you know that was the case? Did the Ob-Gyn residents admit that?

I'm not a bad looking woman and I am not aware of ever being disliked because I was better looking than other women in the group. As a matter of fact, most people like being around good looking people, as long as they are personable and friendly.

I would think that most women (even the stereotypical unpleasant Ob-Gyn resident) are above disliking someone solely for their looks. Envious? Perhaps, but to outrightly dislike someone and evaluate them poorly because of their looks (and nothing else), seems a bit improbable and smacks of "she doth protest too much" on the part of your colleague. This isn't High School or Mean Girls, is it?



It is easy to blame the student here and I agree that the OP has gotten the shaft. No mid-term evaluation, no "talking to", etc trump the fact that he was admittedly late, that he may not have been sensitive to cues from the residents and faculty that he was doing poorly.

I have seen that tardiness angered some lecturers. We had a math prof at college who locked the classroom door when class started, and a pharmacology lecturer in med school who literally yelled at anyone coming in 1-10 minutes late.

That said, it seems pretty petty and narrow-minded to be cavilling over 1 or 3 minutes late. I get that he doesn't want a precedent set so you're gradually coming to 6:30 or something, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. However, I agree that students and residents have to adjust to attending demands with these issues.

Regarding the "beauty" comment, I heard the exact same thing from a female ortho resident, when she was commenting on ob/gyn vs. surgery. She said that while surgery had its malignancy, the competition was more "objective" - how you did clinically, research, how much money you make, weightlifting, whatever. With ob/gyn, she said the malignancy was more subjective like "is she prettier than me?" or "does she dress better?"

The amount of personal viciousness that abounds nowadays in ob/gyn is a secret to no-one. I've heard it multiple times, from multiple sources, from multiple different angles. The cake was what a (tall, slender, and attractive) psych resident told me about ob/gyn: "My God, I've never seen so much psychopathology in my life."

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

I was chastized by my Vascular Surgery attending as an intern for being late. Like the OP, I was there at 6:01 or 6:03, but in this attending's mind, late is late and was unacceptable. He liked me, so I did well otherwise, but he made it clear that when I returned to his rotation later in the year he would expect me to NEVER be late.

The advice I got at the start of third year (and have passed to others) is that being somewhere "on time" means being there 5 minutes early.

 

[maceo]

I was chastized by my Vascular Surgery attending as an intern for being late. Like the OP, I was there at 6:01 or 6:03, but in this attending's mind, late is late and was unacceptable. He liked me, so I did well otherwise, but he made it clear that when I returned to his rotation later in the year he would expect me to NEVER be late.

.

This is psychopathology if i ever saw it. I mean chastising someone for being a few minutes late is just assine especially if the student is going to show up and just stand around. Moreover, if you want someone to respect your time, you should respect theirs as well. Surgeons are notoriously late to the OR, are not around, cant be found and then show up 20 mins after the patient has been asleep to do their surgery. The same surgeons give students a hard time for being late. This is the kind of people you have to deal with. your time is not more valuable then anyone elses

 

[HerBigBrownEyes]

Trouble was, it wasn't "time to time" for the OP. It was reportedly several times on the same rotation.



I agree, not the sole reason to fail someone, but I think students need to realize that some attendings do take tardiness very seriously, and as a reflection of your overall work ethic.

I was chastized by my Vascular Surgery attending as an intern for being late. Like the OP, I was there at 6:01 or 6:03, but in this attending's mind, late is late and was unacceptable. He liked me, so I did well otherwise, but he made it clear that when I returned to his rotation later in the year he would expect me to NEVER be late.



Really? Are you female? This sounds like something men make up about women. How do you know that was the case? Did the Ob-Gyn residents admit that?

I'm not a bad looking woman and I am not aware of ever being disliked because I was better looking than other women in the group. As a matter of fact, most people like being around good looking people, as long as they are personable and friendly.

I would think that most women (even the stereotypical unpleasant Ob-Gyn resident) are above disliking someone solely for their looks. Envious? Perhaps, but to outrightly dislike someone and evaluate them poorly because of their looks (and nothing else), seems a bit improbable and smacks of "she doth protest too much" on the part of your colleague. This isn't High School or Mean Girls, is it?



It is easy to blame the student here and I agree that the OP has gotten the shaft. No mid-term evaluation, no "talking to", etc trump the fact that he was admittedly late, that he may not have been sensitive to cues from the residents and faculty that he was doing poorly.

WS is my SD hero!!! I agree with what you said. I'm actually a gay male (don't know if that makes any difference). And in this case, the women ACTUALLY made that comment in the ob/gyn lounge about how they hated the med student because she was so pretty and supposedly "arrogant" about it (I didn't pick up on that at all). It really was like Mean Girls at my institution. And tardiness is not a good idea; I agree. With such little responsibility you have as a student, one thing that is noticed is whether you are on time or not. My heart goes out to the OP, though (of course I don't know the entire situation or the perspective of the attendings). However, it has been my experience that if a student gets a bad evaluation it is AUTOMATICALLY their fault; it cannot be an unfair system, biased attendings/residents (which in some cases in can be). You realize very quickly how little power you have as a med student and how you are occasionally at the whims of some (often crazy) upper levels. Fortunately, most residents/attendings are very reasonable and easy to work with. But there always are some "bad eggs" which can really destroy/depress an otherwise stellar student. I was lucky enough to not run into any of those situations as a student, but I had several friends/colleagues who did. One last advice to the OP: talk to the person who is writing your dean's letter; at my institution, they take out comments that are isolated (aka only in one rotation). Best of luck!

 

[turkeyjerky]

WS is my SD hero!!! I agree with what you said. I'm actually a gay male (don't know if that makes any difference). And in this case, the women ACTUALLY made that comment in the ob/gyn lounge about how they hated the med student because she was so pretty and supposedly "arrogant" about it (I didn't pick up on that at all). It really was like Mean Girls at my institution. And tardiness is not a good idea; I agree. With such little responsibility you have as a student, one thing that is noticed is whether you are on time or not. My heart goes out to the OP, though (of course I don't know the entire situation or the perspective of the attendings). However, it has been my experience that if a student gets a bad evaluation it is AUTOMATICALLY their fault; it cannot be an unfair system, biased attendings/residents (which in some cases in can be). You realize very quickly how little power you have as a med student and how you are occasionally at the whims of some (often crazy) upper levels. Fortunately, most residents/attendings are very reasonable and easy to work with. But there always are some "bad eggs" which can really destroy/depress an otherwise stellar student. I was lucky enough to not run into any of those situations as a student, but I had several friends/colleagues who did. One last advice to the OP: talk to the person who is writing your dean's letter; at my institution, they take out comments that are isolated (aka only in one rotation). Best of luck!

Sounds like you're pretty much disagreeing with almost everything winged scapula said?

 

[lowbudget]

Wow. I feel bad for you. Unfortunately, this situation happens all too often. My worst fear is getting med students/residents who simply don't care. I've had too many of those types and it's incredibly disrespectful. It makes our jobs suck because we, not only have to do our job and your job, but we also have to try to "manage" you. That's a lot of energy. You can say that it's the job of the supervisor to do all that; but you can also say it's the job of the subordinate to be ready to go and maybe they'll learn something along the way.

aPD is ON POINT with his/her comment! And I'm glad it was brought up. It is NOT overtly harsh. Welcome to the real world. For any of you who have ever worked an effin' job in your life, when you look at the behavior of a lot of the students/residents, you will realize that some people have yet to mature as a professional. Perception matters. 1st impression matters. Everything matters.

In 3rd/4th year, particularly 3rd year REQUIRED clerkships, your clinical performance is mostly subjective. Yea, there's the pimping, and there's examinations, but in front of residents & attendings who are helping YOU along with your "apprenticeship", it's mostly subjective, agree?

Well... There 1 thing during 3rd year clerkship that is VERY objective. And that's being ON TIME. It's observable, measurable, can be validated by others, and it's very concrete. Are you on time or not? It's very simple. It's not easy to do, but it's part of the whole game. You don't get bonus points for being on time. You simply get penalized for being late.

Trust me. Having seen the evaluation process behind the scenes, tardiness (and on time medical records) are very concrete things people put their hats on and you will be nailed every time.

Dude, if you want to be late, be late for other things in your life: movies, dinner, the gym, picking your kids up from day care. Don't. Be. Late. For. Work. And obviously, you're not very good at being late, because you were caught. And called out.

Thankfully it wasnt medicine or surgery. I did well in both of those.

No, it wasn't a field i was interested in pursuing, but it definitely wasnt the first clerkship that i've not been interested in making a career.

Well, ****, kid, here's your problem. It's an attitude issue, and it probably stunk up the place. Core clerkship is core clerkship. It doesn't matter if it was rocket science or basketweaving. Core clerkships are one of the most important parts of medical school (despite med students' obsession with what they've come accustomed to obsess over... tests). These clerkships are no joke and nobody cares if you're not going to make a career out of it. Do you want a career... at all??? Well, get rid of the attitude and treat this clerkship as if it is the most important thing in your life... because guess what? IT IS! You're in MEDICAL SCHOOL! You've sacrificed SO MUCH already with more to come. Why would you blow everything just to tote around a bad attitude? Let it go, man; let your bad habits go!

The fact that on other rotations you got away with a bad attitude is positively reinforcing your negative behavior. Which... btw, is why you showed up to THIS rotation with an even worse attitude. And they finally called you out on it, which is why it was a "surprise".

Nobody cares about your H/HP on other rotations. Nobody cares about your 250. All those things will grant you is a 2nd chance and maybe some sympathy. But trust me, you ain't GM or Ford or the American Financial System: you are not "too big to fail."

Medicine is funny that way. It's called hubris. Whenever a doctor thinks too highly of themselves, they are quickly smacked down, either by the patient's underlying pathology or by circumstances unforeseen. And everyone loves to watch a good Roman tragedy. Don't. Be. That. Person. who becomes a victim. Get rid of your bad attitude and start a new day today. Let this be a cue to action. I'm sure in your heart of hearts you've already meditated on what went wrong.

As a matter of fact, most people like being around good looking people, as long as they are personable and friendly.

Bingo. It's really not that hard.

 

[scootad.]

Repeatedly showing up late (whether 2 minutes or 20 minutes) shows a complete disrespect to your attending and colleagues. Im sorry but you deserve to fail.

In most jobs in the real world, if you show up late repeatedly you will be fired.

End of story.

 

[nancysinatra]

How are students supposed to be on time when the Ob/Gyn residents do things like move around rooms for signout every day but refuse to tell the students? The residents played a catty little game of doing that when I was on my clerkship. Originally they did their signout in a patient lounge every day at the same time. But then a patient threatened to sue the hospital because the residents were taking over that patient's "space." So then the residents got kicked out of there, and they started moving around to different rooms every day. Every day my fellow students and I would get there earlier and earlier, looking for them. They clearly did not want us around, and went to great lengths to get rid of us, although if that caused us to be "late" they never failed to sneer at us.

Pretty much all the times I was tardy for something in medical school it was because the teams or people I was looking for could not be found in the place they said they'd be in at the specified time, and there was no notice given as to where they'd gone, and when I did find them, there was no acknowledgment of any error or miscommunication of any kind on their part.

I'm pointing this out because people who get on their high horse about "tardiness" should at least admit what's going on in the real world, including the tactics employed by Ob/Gyn residents.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

Repeatedly showing up late (whether 2 minutes or 20 minutes) shows a complete disrespect to your attending and colleagues. Im sorry but you deserve to fail.

In most jobs in the real world, if you show up late repeatedly you will be fired.

End of story.

Get real. This is medical school, not a job. The med student is paying tens of thousands for an education - s/he is not an employee and has little (no, NO) relevance to the care of the patient. Third year clerkships *should be* about teaching students the things that every physician should know or at least have some familiarity with, regardless of the ultimate specialty they may enter. That, and helping the students decide on their specialty.

It never should have become this game of playing "professional" and being abused and *failed* by b!tchy Ob/Gyn residents and faculty (who themselves are the far from professional) for being late a few minutes in the morning.

 

[Top Gun]

Repeatedly showing up late (whether 2 minutes or 20 minutes) shows a complete disrespect to your attending and colleagues. Im sorry but you deserve to fail.

In most jobs in the real world, if you show up late repeatedly you will be fired.

End of story.

Oh please. It was two minutes, for God's sake! In sign-out rounds at my hospital, if a resident for a particular team is a few minutes late, they just take signout from the teams whose residents are all there first. No one reprimands the resident who was a few minutes late. They probably would if it was ten minutes, but not one or two minutes. And we're talking about residents here.
In this case, this was a student being late to signout rounds, which really are of very little relevance to him/her. Its not like the student was there to take signout for the day.

 

[scootad.]

Medical students need to remember only 3 basic things to avoid a failing grade.

1. Show up on time.

2. Speak only when spoken to.

3. If the resident or attending asks you to do something (within reason), do it.

If they want to do well, they should read, be enthusiastic, etc.

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

Well, ****, kid, here's your problem. It's an attitude issue, and it probably stunk up the place. Core clerkship is core clerkship. It doesn't matter if it was rocket science or basketweaving. Core clerkships are one of the most important parts of medical school (despite med students' obsession with what they've come accustomed to obsess over... tests). These clerkships are no joke and nobody cares if you're not going to make a career out of it.

Strongly agree with this - there are several people on this thread who are like "Oh, it's just OB/Gyn, so it's no big deal" or who are ready to just dismiss this as typical OB b*tchiness. But guess what, somehow 90+% of med students manage to make it through OB without failing - and a lot of them even do well and enjoy it!

 

[tchoupdoc]

We had a student who really wanted to match in ortho, was really helpful in ortho clinics and surgeries, pretty good researcher as well.

Ortho dept discovered in his dean's letter that he had at times skipped some mandatory requirements of cores to work in ortho clinics/surgeries.

He was not ranked by our ortho dept.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

You know, I think you've got some valid grounds to appeal on, especially the syllabus statement about professionalism, and the fact that you sent an email asking for an eval and didn't get it. Straight up failing a med student in a clerkship and filling the eval with really negative comments is pretty hard core and should be reserved for the worst of the worst medical students. If you're uninterested and have a mediocre knowledge base, I think you'd still merit a low pass. It also sucks that the clerkship director went on a 3 week vacation after grades went out, especially knowing that you would have a need to talk to him/her.

As for tardiness, some people are pretty uptight about that, so definitely be on time if you have to repeat this stupid rotation. I don't get it because I'm usually running late and grew up in a family where we were late to everything. I think people are kind of wired differently in regards to that whole issue.

 

[SoCuteMD]

Oh please. It was two minutes, for God's sake! In sign-out rounds at my hospital, if a resident for a particular team is a few minutes late, they just take signout from the teams whose residents are all there first. No one reprimands the resident who was a few minutes late. They probably would if it was ten minutes, but not one or two minutes. And we're talking about residents here.
In this case, this was a student being late to signout rounds, which really are of very little relevance to him/her. Its not like the student was there to take signout for the day.

In my program, being late 1-5 minutes regularly is a source of annoyance and if a sub-i did it, they'd most certainly get a lower grade. If a resident did it, he or she would certainly be reminded when the change of shift was and that they needed to be there AT change of shift.

 

[dreambig2night]

I would suggest u talk to your Clinical Education departement about this issue.

I had a similar situation where the preceptor tried to fail me. I did fine in all my previous rotations prior to the one.

School cleared it up for me. My worst nightmare for 2 months.

I hope u get out of this ok.

 

[Miami_med]

I had a similar experience in OB/GYN. I actually had 3 differen sub-rotations, and I did average, above average, and extremely poor as my scores on the 3, with the poor grade between the decent ones. I pissed off the intern by "being in the way when I want to look at the chart," (do not piss of the intern). It was my only poor evaluation of any kind in all of my rotations. I think that the bad OB/GYN with good everything else scores is reasonably common.

That being said, this should really be a lesson to NEVER NEVER NEVER be late in medicine. This is 100% more true in anything even quasi-surgical. The fact that you were late will make fighting this probably legitimately exaggerated issue a lot harder for you.

 

[TopSecret]

That's harsh but you could've arrived on time and completed the required encounters and procedures.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

That's harsh but you could've arrived on time and completed the required encounters and procedures.

If you read the op's post, you'll see that he did complete the required encounters and procedures and has documentation showing that.

 

[Top Gun]

In my program, being late 1-5 minutes regularly is a source of annoyance and if a sub-i did it, they'd most certainly get a lower grade. If a resident did it, he or she would certainly be reminded when the change of shift was and that they needed to be there AT change of shift.

Guess it varies from program to program. My program is pretty chill if residents arrive at signout 1-2 minutes late. If its over 5 minutes, then you'll be in trouble.

 

[Winged Scapula]

This is psychopathology if i ever saw it. I mean chastising someone for being a few minutes late is just assine especially if the student is going to show up and just stand around. Moreover, if you want someone to respect your time, you should respect theirs as well. Surgeons are notoriously late to the OR, are not around, cant be found and then show up 20 mins after the patient has been asleep to do their surgery. The same surgeons give students a hard time for being late. This is the kind of people you have to deal with. your time is not more valuable then anyone elses

In this attending's defense, he was NEVER late - not to rounds, not to the OR, not to anything.

He expected nothing less from his residents but what really mattered is that he told me his expectations, I changed my behavior and he noted it when it came time for evals with a good report.

 

[Winged Scapula]

We had a student who really wanted to match in ortho, was really helpful in ortho clinics and surgeries, pretty good researcher as well.

Ortho dept discovered in his dean's letter that he had at times skipped some mandatory requirements of cores to work in ortho clinics/surgeries.

He was not ranked by our ortho dept.

We had a student do exactly that but in Plastics. He wasn't ranked either when they found out that he had a bad attitude on his other rotations and skipped some of them to be in the OR with the PRS team.