On your OBGYN and Surgery Rotations did you get atleast 1 day off per week?

[GalenAgas]

Just trying to figure out if I got the short end of the stick.

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[badasshairday]

Just trying to figure out if I got the short end of the stick.

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

 

[link2swim06]

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

Hardly...it would be nice to have time off so you can study for shelf exams. Especially considering that is the one factor that generally determines your grade.

Most "didactic stuff" covers maybe 20% of the shelf material if you are lucky.

Seeing my 542nd URI will not help my shelf score/grade.

 

[godless]

Hardly...it would be nice to have time off so you can study for shelf exams. Especially considering that is the one factor that generally determines your grade.

Most "didactic stuff" covers maybe 20% of the shelf material if you are lucky.

Seeing my 542nd URI will not help my shelf score/grade.

I second that.

 

[evilbooyaa]

Just trying to figure out if I got the short end of the stick.

As a MS3 we get weekends off. On Surgery a med student had to be on overnight call every weeknight (generally this would translate into once every 1.5 weeks or something), and on OB/Gyn, we do a week of OB Night Float, 5pm to 7am. Sub-Is are expected to get one day off on weekends.

Whether the on-call nights helped... well saw some interesting stuff at times, participated in my first code, got to help more with the initial trauma eval of patients. However, it is generally a crapshoot based on who wants to go do stupid stuff at 2am. I had nights where nothing came into Trauma. Unfortunately, the residents who took general surgery call usually didn't want med students following them around, but wouldn't text/page us either if something was going to the OR. Sitting down in the ED with no responsibilities gets boring and quashes enthusiasm pretty damn quickly.

 

[Textbookversion]

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

Because PA's have shelfs and step 2 to study for. Oh wait.

 

[ijn]

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

Seriously dude? You were a medical student once. Remember way back when. Most medical schools give you at least one weekend day off. This dude is getting ****ed. Being in the hospital 7 days a week doesn't help your clerkship grade at all if the shelf exam is what determines honors/high pass/pass at your school.

He can still learn to be an intern during his subinternships and intern year. Shocking, I know.

 

[Siggy]

Just trying to figure out if I got the short end of the stick.

For where I rotated...

OB: most people had 2-3 24 hour weekend calls in a 6 week rotation. A few lucky people had 0-1 because it was completely random.

Surgery: 4 week rotation, 1 24 hour call shift a week, everyone had 1 Saturday call and either 1 Friday or 1 Sunday call.

Schedule wise, my worst rotation was (inpatient) Family Med. It followed a set cycle of 8am-8pm followed by a "rounds" shift (come in, write notes, round, floor work, go home. No admits for this day) followed by 2 days of either 10am-11pm swing shifts or 10pm-10am night shifts then a day off. Weekends, weekdays, no difference. The only upside was that my team was post call both my first day on the rotation and the last Friday on the rotation.

I'd rather do another month of surgery than another month of -that-.

 

[JP2740]

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

Yawn. PA's have 2 years of school. 1 year is clinical. Med students have 2 years + a ****load of residency to learn what they need, and many will not even go into surgery. I'm all for learning, but it's just a couple months of each field.

 

[Law2Doc]

Seriously dude? You were a medical student once. Remember way back when. Most medical schools give you at least one weekend day off. This dude is getting ****ed. Being in the hospital 7 days a week doesn't help your clerkship grade at all if the shelf exam is what determines honors/high pass/pass at your school.

He can still learn to be an intern during his subinternships and intern year. Shocking, I know.

While I wouldn't take the extreme view that the person with the least time off gets the best education, I would suggest that (a) resident duty hours dont apply to med students so whatever your school deems fair is what it is -- there isn't a global rule. (b) even under resident rules you didn't necessarilly get off 1 day a week, you get off 4 days a month. So that often meant working one full weekend, one golden weekend and two split weekends per month, if you are lucky enough to have off on weekends instead of weekdays. (c) you will be better prepared for intern year if your clinical rotations aren't fluff -- some are.

 

[GalenAgas]

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

Same goes for you. Do you work 7 days a week for greater than 8 weeks at time (OBGYN and Surgery back to back)?



If not clearly you're missing an important opportunity to learn and practice your skills. Whatever will you do when you're an attending and you need to make decisions on your own? <---- see how annoying that sounds

 

[DrYoda]

We usually got the chance to have one of the weekend days off. Some of the time I opted for 12 days followed by two days off since I enjoy having consecutive days off.

 

[Stellar Clouds]

Just trying to figure out if I got the short end of the stick.

Our school basically follows pgy-2+ rules. 24 hour call, post-call day off, 1 day off per week averaged over 4 weeks.

You school should have pretty obvious rules regarding work hours/days off.

 

[mvenus929]

In text, we were supposed to be post-call (after our 24 hour call) for a day, and have an additional day off. When I was on the away part of my surgery rotation, I had to work M-F, then come in and work Sat and Sun night, then come back Tues morning to work T-F. However, I got the whole weekend off and was able to travel to go to a wedding after that mess of a block, so I don't think the deal was all that bad, considering.

 

[JShephard]

Hardly...it would be nice to have time off so you can study for shelf exams. Especially considering that is the one factor that generally determines your grade.

Most "didactic stuff" covers maybe 20% of the shelf material if you are lucky.

Seeing my 542nd URI will not help my shelf score/grade.

Lol. How about it would be nice to have time off to... have time off. I can do 80 hrs of work in 6 days, if that's not enough then what are we doing on this planet?

 

[JShephard]

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

If not wanting to work 365 days a year is self entitlement then I am self entitled. I don't care to work everyday of my life. Having a day off not to catch up on studies or spend more time in the hospital is a good thing.

 

[JShephard]

Our school basically follows pgy-2+ rules. 24 hour call, post-call day off, 1 day off per week averaged over 4 weeks.

You school should have pretty obvious rules regarding work hours/days off.

Sounds fair

 

[Textbookversion]

If not wanting to work 365 days a year is self entitlement then I am self entitled. I don't care to work everyday of my life. Having a day off not to catch up on studies or spend more time in the hospital is a good thing.

Yeah people in medicine are ridiculous. Sometimes I feel like medical education is just one long hazing process.

Take two groups, one of them has 40 hrs a week of rotations 3rd and 4th year, the other has 80 hours a week.

I'd hazard a guess both groups would be equally clueless day 1 of internship.

 

[Law2Doc]

Yeah people in medicine are ridiculous. Sometimes I feel like medical education is just one long hazing process.

Take two groups, one of them has 40 hrs a week of rotations 3rd and 4th year, the other has 80 hours a week.

I'd hazard a guess both groups would be equally clueless day 1 of internship.

There's always a learning curve but it's definitely steeper for some than others. A lot of intern year survival is mental -- if the hours don't seem that crazy because you've worked similar hours during your Sub-I, you tolerate it better.

A lot of the senior resident crowd did med school prior to the most recent duty hour changes, so a lot of us used to have to come in and pre round and then clean things up at either end of 30 hour shifts. If the residents you were working with hit 80 hours, the med student, who had to come in before them, probably hit 85. So some of you guys have it pretty good.

It was eye opening, and hard, but I definitely saw and did a lot more than med students I have subsequently overseen at lighter programs. Made it much easier for many to pick a specialty because the insight as to the residency hours was more realistic (you have a very different take regarding how hard or doable 80 hours a week is if you've done it for a few rotations). But mostly you come in to intern year at a slightly different place, at least mentally, on the learning curve. And every little bit of this matters when you are getting beat down, physically and emotionally, as an intern. Can you adjust when you get there? Sure. But making adjustments to your mindset and psyche is not as easy during a trying intern year as opposed to med school (which seems hard when you are in the thick of it, but in retrospect won't have been the same kind if stress).

I don't know if this helps, but that's my two cents from the other side of the gauntlet. And yes it's a bit of a hazing process, but one with a purpose because the hazing does translate to a mindset that will help you later on. I prefer looking at it a breaking people down a bit so you can build them up better/stronger.

 

[cheruka]

Medical students have post-rotaion exams. PAs do not.

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

 

[45408]

I didn't necessarily get 1 day off per week. If I was on call on the weekend, then I was there ~13 days in a row, then at least 1 day off the following weekend. On medicine, we had Q4 short call (leave at 10pm, next day is regular day), and on trauma surgery, we had Q4 in-house call (30 hour rule).

If you're working both days every weekend, I'd definitely talk to the course coordinator. If you're getting 4 days off in 4 weeks, then I don't think you have anything to complain about.

 

[Bacchus]

To the OP, yes. On surgery we didn't have weekends but did have to do a Friday night call into Saturday. We had ~q4 call on surgery. On OB we had no weekends but did have a week of night float.

 

[KnuxNole]

I got weekends offs, but had to come in on a Saturday or Sunday on occasion.

 

[EM2013]

There is nothing that wastes a medical student's time more than "call." I was lucky and had to do a minimal amount of this nonsense during my 3rd year, but I've heard horror stories from people at other schools such as q4 o/n call on surgery. What is the use of this? Beats the hell out of me. I expended enough effort during the weekday time trying go get these sociopaths to talk to me, let alone teach me, so why should a medical student sacrifice more time that they can be using to study, exercise, relax, etc.?

Everyone knows that 95% of your learning how to be a physician will occur during your residency and you'll be more excited to put in the hours when you're doing something more than following some resident around or retracting for 8 hours in a silent OR.

My advice is to find a sympathetic resident who remembers what it was like to be a medical student and try to get them to send you home.

 

[laconfidential]

Nope. There were months where I got maybe one or two days off, max.

But I go to a DO school where we get worked like dogs. I had a couple of rotations with students from other local MD schools and it really burned when they got weekends off and I got to work.

Very glad to be going to a residency that truly sticks to ACGME work hours.

 

[Law2Doc]

There is nothing that wastes a medical student's time more than "call." I was lucky and had to do a minimal amount of this nonsense during my 3rd year, but I've heard horror stories from people at other schools such as q4 o/n call on surgery. What is the use of this? Beats the hell out of me. I expended enough effort during the weekday time trying go get these sociopaths to talk to me, let alone teach me, so why should a medical student sacrifice more time that they can be using to study, exercise, relax, etc.?

Everyone knows that 95% of your learning how to be a physician will occur during your residency and you'll be more excited to put in the hours when you're doing something more than following some resident around or retracting for 8 hours in a silent OR.

My advice is to find a sympathetic resident who remembers what it was like to be a medical student and try to get them to send you home.

Residents aren't uniform in their teaching abilities, nor do many of them care if you learn or not. Whether a resident teaches well or not rarely works it's way into residency evaluations and, from a resident perspective, the attendings only really care about the residents taking good care of their patients, not what they do with the med students. So you have to find the handful that are enthusiastic about showing what they are doing and be proactive. The 90% of med student who visibly don't want to be there and sit waiting for someone to assign them something will end up with the attitude you are expressing above -- this is a big waste of time, why do I have to be here. But this isn't everyone's experience and it mostly fells on the med student to be proactive and enthusiastic around the right residents to better their lot. Rotations to a great degree are about attitude and what you make of it.

 

[JShephard]

There is nothing that wastes a medical student's time more than "call." I was lucky and had to do a minimal amount of this nonsense during my 3rd year, but I've heard horror stories from people at other schools such as q4 o/n call on surgery. What is the use of this? Beats the hell out of me. I expended enough effort during the weekday time trying go get these sociopaths to talk to me, let alone teach me, so why should a medical student sacrifice more time that they can be using to study, exercise, relax, etc.?

Everyone knows that 95% of your learning how to be a physician will occur during your residency and you'll be more excited to put in the hours when you're doing something more than following some resident around or retracting for 8 hours in a silent OR.

My advice is to find a sympathetic resident who remembers what it was like to be a medical student and try to get them to send you home.

Agreed. Sounds like just another hazing tool. I'll be Mr. Enthusiastic 70 or so hours a week, but I didn't sign up to LIVE medicine. I think the one day a week off averaged over the month is fair.

The counter argument that we can be better doctors by working everyday, or heal more people, or blah blah blah... I really don't think it matters. I feel like some of these people would join a medical convent and pledge to a life of celibacy if it meant dropping complication rates by 1%.

Americans are richer than ever before and accomplishing twice as much, reaching the pinnacle of civilization. Yet we as a nation are less healthy, obese, tons of divorce, taking adhd and anti depression drugs, and on and on. I wonder if this attitude of achieve more, earn more, score more, work more, do 30 hr shifts, come in on off days, get paged and come to the hospital instead of sleeping for years, etc. I wonder how good that is for people and what the purpose of all that is?

I'm not pro-Europe but those countries that focus on frequently dining with friends and family (multiple times per week) instead of figuring out how you can manage to get a day off per week to study for a multiple choice exam, I bet those people are happier and less cynical.

 

[45408]

There is nothing that wastes a medical student's time more than "call." I was lucky and had to do a minimal amount of this nonsense during my 3rd year, but I've heard horror stories from people at other schools such as q4 o/n call on surgery. What is the use of this? Beats the hell out of me. I expended enough effort during the weekday time trying go get these sociopaths to talk to me, let alone teach me, so why should a medical student sacrifice more time that they can be using to study, exercise, relax, etc.?

Everyone knows that 95% of your learning how to be a physician will occur during your residency and you'll be more excited to put in the hours when you're doing something more than following some resident around or retracting for 8 hours in a silent OR.

My advice is to find a sympathetic resident who remembers what it was like to be a medical student and try to get them to send you home.

So why bother with med school at all?

I actually saw/learned quite a bit on call, both on trauma surgery and OB. I thought so then, and I think so now.

 

[bjb305]

So why bother with med school at all?

I actually saw/learned quite a bit on call, both on trauma surgery and OB. I thought so then, and I think so now.

On all of my calls from every rotation... there was nothing unique about being on call that allowed me to learn something that didn't present itself on the regular day shift

 

[EM2013]

On all of my calls from every rotation... there was nothing unique about being on call that allowed me to learn something that didn't present itself on the regular day shift

This.

Residents aren't uniform in their teaching abilities, nor do many of them care if you learn or not. Whether a resident teaches well or not rarely works it's way into residency evaluations and, from a resident perspective, the attendings only really care about the residents taking good care of their patients, not what they do with the med students. So you have to find the handful that are enthusiastic about showing what they are doing and be proactive. The 90% of med student who visibly don't want to be there and sit waiting for someone to assign them something will end up with the attitude you are expressing above -- this is a big waste of time, why do I have to be here. But this isn't everyone's experience and it mostly fells on the med student to be proactive and enthusiastic around the right residents to better their lot. Rotations to a great degree are about attitude and what you make of it.

I aspire to be better. There's no reason why a medical student should be required to sit twiddling their thumbs, pretending to read something while I write notes, enter orders, make phone calls, etc. Next year I plan to set aside time for teaching, or if circumstances doesn't permit this, sending the students home. There is no educational value to waiting around at 3am on a Friday night with you thumb up your a** for something that MIGHT come in.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Residents aren't uniform in their teaching abilities, nor do many of them care if you learn or not. Whether a resident teaches well or not rarely works it's way into residency evaluations and, from a resident perspective, the attendings only really care about the residents taking good care of their patients, not what they do with the med students. So you have to find the handful that are enthusiastic about showing what they are doing and be proactive. The 90% of med student who visibly don't want to be there and sit waiting for someone to assign them something will end up with the attitude you are expressing above -- this is a big waste of time, why do I have to be here. But this isn't everyone's experience and it mostly fells on the med student to be proactive and enthusiastic around the right residents to better their lot. Rotations to a great degree are about attitude and what you make of it.

I mean, they SHOULD care if the students learn; they were in those shoes just a couple of years ago. Regardless of how far it goes in the residency evals, making sure the students get something out of their rotation is just the right thing to do. Of course, if a student acts visibly uninterested or is clearly just trying to skirt by doing the minimum, I might not try as hard... but assuming the student motivated and is trying to learn, I hope I'll be able to take time to help him or her out.

To answer the original question: I don't think I had any rotation as a student where we didn't get at least four days off over the course of the month. I'll agree that the most important things I learned in med school came from actually seeing patients, and call was actually great if they let me take admissions by myself. But there has to be some time available for reading to make sure you're ready for the shelf.

 

[evilbooyaa]

I would say there was some stuff on surgery calls that I saw that I wouldn't have seen normally (like emergency surgeries, like complete SBOs x 5 d/t a few reasons), + greater responsibilities on traumas (including a fem stick on one), + participating in a code rather than just standing in the shadows

I also didn't mind call per se because getting the next day off was awesome. Thursday night call going into Friday morning? Finish rounding and stuff by 8AM, GTFO the hospital, and enjoy the (short) 3 day weekend.

I guess I didn't have that much call though, and a few nights literally nothing came in from the trauma side. Didn't help that those nights, the gen surg residents essentially told me to piss off and not bother following them around as well. I can't do anything when the residents on call tell me to not follow them around, then don't call me when **** is going down.

I think overnight call is fine, but if I didn't have at least one day off a week I may have gone insane. Having 2 days off every weekend was (what I now realize) a luxury. There were a total of 8-9 students on the surgery rotation at any given time, so it was call every 1.5-2 weeks depending on scheduling.

 

[45408]

On all of my calls from every rotation... there was nothing unique about being on call that allowed me to learn something that didn't present itself on the regular day shift

Way more babies were born at night than during the day. New consults came in through the ED, because people sit at home all day, thinking "Should I go to the ER?" and then decide to go at 6-8pm.

Almost all penetrating trauma came in after 4-5pm, and I was busy nearly all night every night on trauma surgery. I wished we had less to do. Also, unless you have a very atypical rotation site, or you never followed the first-call resident around, I also don't really believe that you saw all of the same things during the day as you did at night. I've only had three patients code on the floor, and they were all at night. Quite a few things only happen at night. Trauma, delirium, acute abdomens, etc. are all more common.

Of course, if a student acts visibly uninterested or is clearly just trying to skirt by doing the minimum, I might not try as hard... but assuming the student motivated and is trying to learn, I hope I'll be able to take time to help him or her out.

Just you wait and see....

You'll find yourself not bothering more often than you expected, because of how bored/disinterested the student acts. I definitely try to teach more when someone is interested and friendly than when they're always gazing off into space or never volunteering to do a darn thing.

 

[badasshairday]

I definitely try to teach more when someone is interested and friendly than when they're always gazing off into space or never volunteering to do a darn thing.

I hate lazy medical students. Love the hard working students that actually really want to learn, no matter what specialty they are going into.

 

[JourneyAgent]

I hate lazy medical students. Love the hard working students that actually really want to learn, no matter what specialty they are going into.

Really? That's so uninteresting that....(gazing off into space).

 

[ijn]

I hate lazy medical students. Love the hard working students that actually really want to learn, no matter what specialty they are going into.

I hate lazy residents. Make it worth my time to pay attention. I'm paying to be here. Stop making excuses why you don't want to teach and go teach.

I'm sure your day is a lot easier when you're able to label the vast majority of students who rotate with you as lazy and therefore ignore them. You're such a rad resident. I wish I had you during third year.

 

[Siggy]

I hate lazy residents. Make it worth my time to pay attention. I'm paying to be here. Stop making excuses why you don't want to teach and go teach.

I'm sure your day is a lot easier when you're able to label the vast majority of students who rotate with you as lazy and therefore ignore them. You're such a rad resident. I wish I had you during third year.

...except very little to none of that money actually makes it into the pocket of the residents.

 

[ijn]

...except very little to none of that money actually makes it into the pocket of the residents.

Note to all future residents I work with: I'll pay you under the table with loan money if you'll step up your teaching effort.

 

[45408]

I hate lazy residents. Make it worth my time to pay attention. I'm paying to be here. Stop making excuses why you don't want to teach and go teach.

I'm sure your day is a lot easier when you're able to label the vast majority of students who rotate with you as lazy and therefore ignore them. You're such a rad resident. I wish I had you during third year.

literally none of my salary (and this is at my institution, your mileage may vary) comes from your tuition. And no, I will not try to make it worth your effort to pay attention. You get to take the first step. That's what it means to be an adult learner.

 

[Gastrapathy]

As an ms3, I sort of sewed up the rather large scalp laceration of the intoxicated trauma chief resident at 3am. He was supposed to come on at 6am and his q2 (b4 work hours) opposite was so pissed, he left me to try to close it and took the stapler out of the room.

Can't tell me that would have happened during the day. Less supervision and bad things happen at night. If you hide in your call room, then it's a waste. If you hang in the sicu, trauma bay, etc you'll get to do more than any other time in med school.

 

[Gastrapathy]

Oh and this is an apprenticeship system. Everyone is paying to be there in some way except the attendings. If you feel like residents owe you something, you don't really understand what your tuition purchased. You bought entry level membership in our club. You'll keep paying dues for your entire career (boards, licenses, MOC, dea certs, professional societies, etc).

I agree that it's important for housestaff to teach well but you must realize that our current model does not incentivize them doing so.

 

[Law2Doc]

...
I aspire to be better. There's no reason why a medical student should be required to sit twiddling their thumbs, pretending to read something while I write notes, enter orders, make phone calls, etc. Next year I plan to set aside time for teaching, or if circumstances doesn't permit this, sending the students home. There is no educational value to waiting around at 3am on a Friday night with you thumb up your a** for something that MIGHT come in.

I think everybody starts out with great aspirations. But then a ton of stuff gets dumped on you as a resident. If the med student rolls up his sleeves and helps you dig out of under it, you teach when you can, based on what happens that shift and their level of interest/enthusiasm. If, as is more often the case, the med student is obviously disinterested or sees your whole job as scut that he's too important to deal with, you lose interest. I think most residents would be happy to send such med students home early, or just have them take the whole rotation off. But that's not really always an option, even if it seems like nothing is going on. A lot of us have had bad experiences where we got ripped a new one by an attending who popped in at an unexpected time or due to an unexpected case, and on arrival bellowed for his med students so he could teach. as a resident, your job is mostly to keep the attendings happy, not the med students. Its a hard job. You have enough on your plate to del with without pissing off an attending over this kind of stuff. Its simply not worth it to get beaten down by the attending for trying to be a nice guy and sending a student home early. You have to work with the student for at best a month and the attending for years. The attending is the one who evaluates you, and writes letters for you for fellowship and makes phone calls to help you get a job. He us your number one "customer", not the med student. So yeah, your perspective is going to change when you reach residency. You will try to teach those students who show an interest, and you won't put your neck on the line to send those who don't home, if you have reason to believe the attending wouldn't condone this (med students generally won't realize which attendings care and which don't, but the residents generally do, or if not, they err on the side of caution).

 

[Law2Doc]

Oh and this is an apprenticeship system. Everyone is paying to be there in some way except the attendings. If you feel like residents owe you something, you don't really understand what your tuition purchased. You bought entry level membership in our club. You'll keep paying dues for your entire career (boards, licenses, MOC, dea certs, professional societies, etc).

I agree that it's important for housestaff to teach well but you must realize that our current model does not incentivize them doing so.

This. Residents don't see a dime of money being paid by the med students. If anything, there are a lot of incentives in place emphasizing that residents keep the attendings happy even at the expense of the med students. Med students pay to get a foot in the door but what happens in the other side is all about effort and enthusiasm and attitude. If you are on the wards hoping to be spoon fed, it won't work.

 

[JourneyAgent]

I don't expect anyone to teach. And understand the apprenticeship system. But talking about standing by ready to sprint, while a resident does all of the thousands of mundane things that they have to do to get through a day, is a f'n ridiculous notion. I have stuff to do too. I have to do well on a shelf exam. Learn the basic tenets of your field. And keep my own self together. Watching you do paperwork and pretending like its fascinating might make you feel awesome. Might even make you consider me one of your golden children. Such that you will reward me with golden nuggets of wisdom about a field I have zero intention of going into. But.... I am a grown @ss adult learner. And the most important part of that is deciding judiciously where to put my effort. And not worrying about impressing anyone.

And this is from someone that helps you do all your boring stuff without complaint.

But this assinine vibe of looking at med students like lazy bums that have to aspire to impress you is laughable. Your a cog. I'm your assistant. We have very different jobs to do. Let's not make it hard on each other by acting like weenies who think they're bad@sses.

 

[ijn]

literally none of my salary (and this is at my institution, your mileage may vary) comes from your tuition. And no, I will not try to make it worth your effort to pay attention. You get to take the first step. That's what it means to be an adult learner.

It's part of your job to teach me. Man up and take care of your responsibilities.

 

[e30ftw]

fiesty...

op you should get 4 days off per month. this is policy at most med schools iirc. if you're not, talk to your coordinator.

I don't really mild lazy med students because in general med students slow things down anyway so the less work they do the smoother things go.

my main gripe is the gunners who try to one up residents and appear very confident about procedures/etc then have absolutely no idea what they're doing later on. ymmv.

 

[GoSpursGo]

And no, I will not try to make it worth your effort to pay attention. You get to take the first step. That's what it means to be an adult learner.

I think that's fair.

 

[45408]

It's part of your job to teach me. Man up and take care of your responsibilities.

1. It's not part of my job. For grins, I just re-read my residency contract, and there is not one word about medical students in it, despite the fact that we do have med students regularly. There's a list of my responsibilities, and patient care is #1 on there. If I'm not teaching med students, it's probably because I have patient care responsibilities to deal with first.

2. You are not in a position to be lecturing me about my responsibilities, and you're being an immature jerk about it. Where did I say that I don't teach med students? I enjoy it, actually, as long as the student is somewhat interested.


Believe it or not, students are not all as hard-working, intelligent and interested in learning as they all portray themselves to be on SDN. Some show up late, leave early, call in sick with little notice, wait to be told what to do rather than saying "I'll follow these patients, go to these cases, and do this clinic time, unless you have a better recommendation," and even when they are told what to do, will still fail to follow up on it. If that's the case, I'm going to put in as much effort to teach them as they are putting into learning: not much.

I don't expect anyone to teach. And understand the apprenticeship system. But talking about standing by ready to sprint, while a resident does all of the thousands of mundane things that they have to do to get through a day, is a f'n ridiculous notion. I have stuff to do too. I have to do well on a shelf exam. Learn the basic tenets of your field.

But this assinine vibe of looking at med students like lazy bums that have to aspire to impress you is laughable. Your a cog. I'm your assistant. We have very different jobs to do. Let's not make it hard on each other by acting like weenies who think they're bad@sses.

If I'm doing paperwork, I will always send someone away to read or go home (and I'm pretty specific about when it's okay to go home without it making you look bad). If someone has had to sit through me filling out a form or dictating something, it's because there wasn't anything else for them to do, or we were about to go do something that would be useful for them. If I see the junior residents leading a hapless student around to do busywork, I'll intervene.

And you're really not my assistant. It's been the very rare med student that actually lightens our work load. Nearly every one makes it more work.

 

[45408]

It's also fairly apparent that you're one of the entitled students we're referring to:

Being a scutmonkey is not necessary to do well. My attendings didn't give one **** if I was getting blankets or positioning the patient. That's what the circulating nurse is there for. Let her do her job. She actually gets paid to do it, unlike you.

Focus on learning about your patients, writing good notes, learning pre/post op orders, and studying for your shelf.

Uh huh. And in the real world in most cases we're twiddling our thumbs for 10-15 minutes waiting for the surgeon to enter the room. Setting up the bed 2 minutes faster with the medical student doesn't materially alter turnaround time. It's just busywork that can make people feel like they're doing something useful in the awkward situation that is being a third year medical student.

You assume wrong. There are no surgery residents at this hospital. It's all private practice guys who accepted academic titles in name only and have MS3/MS4s assigned to them. The surgeon shows up way after everything is set up because they're rounding/eating/on the phone with a future ex wife or girlfriend 15 years younger than them/dicking around in the surgeon's lounge watching FOXNEWS and bitching about the end of freedom/America/medicine between cases. Except for robotics. Then the surgeon shows up 30 minutes before setup is even near done (because it takes a ****ing hour to set up). However the scrub tech is about the only person allowed to touch the da Vinci.

You value scutmonkey more than knowledge. We get it. At some schools knowledge is way more important than being an unpaid hypomanic slave who's just raring to do any little piece of bull**** busywork to get noticed by their superior. There are people who are actually paid to do those jobs. It's perverse that you expect the guy who's paying thousands of dollars to be the one whoring himself out.

At first I helped position patients like a good little naive third year. But then I figured out that it there was no reason for me to be doing it. My attending never saw it. Nursing staff never has any impact on our evals. There's no resident in the room. The sole arbiter of our eval was the attending. It's higher yield to suck his dick (metaphorically of course) than anything else.

I'm highly adaptable. If it's going to get noticed I'll do the work. Although I doubt the bar is very high on my radiology away rotations. And subinternships done after rank lists are submitted tend to... not matter one iota.

Why would they know dear? There's plenty attendings have no clue about. You're not actually omniscient and omnipresent despite how big your egos are.

 

[wolfvgang22]

Med students are very self entitled for some reason.

My PA students did overnight call with me and it would be one PA student with one Intern. 2 interns on the team. Each PA student saw 3-5 patients on call.

The med students only did days, so it was 2 med students with one Intern, they saw like one or 2 patients on call.

The more you see, the more you learn.

Apparently some med students complained when they had to do overnight call, and they have all this "didactic" stuff.

No you are not getting the short end of the stick, in fact you are getting a chance to learn more. Good luck.

You sound like an Ob/gyn resident, because I've heard others say that a lot! I worked with almost no days off back when I was an MS3 a few years ago and did the same call as the interns. What I learned is that Ob/gyn residents are sleep deprived and cranky.
It kinda damped my enthusiasm.

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