People hogging patients

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What do you do when people on your team keep hogging patients? There's way too many elective students and way too few patients = ****ty learning experience. And there's this other student who keeps hogging patients. I think it's ridiculous when someone has like 5-6 patients and another person only has 1-2. And they're unwilling to give up their patient, and the senior doesn't do anything about it. Talk to the senior?

I've never encountered this before and I think it's utterly ridiculous. And this person goes behind other people's backs and tries to take more patients from residents after the initial division of the list is done.

Normally wouldn't care, but no one likes to look lazy either.

 

[Bacchus]

I sympathize with you. I haven't experienced this myself but it seems awful. Are you a "core" student and these other student(s) are "elective?" If that's the case, I'd reason your education comes first because it's your first exposure to the specialty.

Have you talked to the other student? Do you know his or her reasoning? Do you have another resident or even attending you could talk to? Often, the Department of Medical Education secretary is enlisted in handling problems or at least passing them on. If this is a chronic thing, have you tried this route?

No one student should have 5-6 patients when another has 1-2. It seems you have work ethic which is marvelous. You're being "robbed" of patients and not because you don't give a crap, but because someone else is trying to compensate. It makes you look bad which is unfair.

 

[officedepot]

no student should have 5-6 pts period if he/she is not a sub-I. M3 should at max have 3 patients. The point is to spend time with each patient and know everything about that patient. Then go home and read/study up on the patient and study for the rotation in general. Too many other things to do.

A person doing it as an elective is probably a M4 and trying to impress the team and get a LOR.

My advice is to talk to the senior resident and ask if you should take on more patients. Since you are M3 they may only want you to have 2-3 so it's not big deal. Sersiously, do not waste 100% of your energy in the hospital doing scut work because you have a ton of studying to do.

 

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The opposite actually, I'm a sub-I and the other people fighting for patients are another sub-I and a M3. The other sub-I, fine, whatever, which is still stupid, but the M3? I find it kind of ridiculous this person is hanging onto patients and not letting go. I don't know if it's the rationale that if they admit they patient, they must keep them. That's kind of stupid too though. The major issue is that it's not too busy.

The senior doesn't do anything about it really. Which kinda sucks. Forget about LOR here, I think I'll just use more time to study and learn.

 

[officedepot]

The opposite actually, I'm a sub-I and the other people fighting for patients are another sub-I and a M3. The other sub-I, fine, whatever, which is still stupid, but the M3? I find it kind of ridiculous this person is hanging onto patients and not letting go. I don't know if it's the rationale that if they admit they patient, they must keep them. That's kind of stupid too though. The major issue is that it's not too busy.

The senior doesn't do anything about it really. Which kinda sucks. Forget about LOR here, I think I'll just use more time to study and learn.

That's so weird for a M3 to be fighting like that. At my school sub-I work directly with the senior resident and pick up every other new patient for themselves alternating with the intern. The M3 works directly with the intern. Therefore you really shouldn't have to compete with anyone. It's more luck of the draw.

Just tell the M3 to calm down when a new patient comes and that you'll take him because you need more. Again that M3 should at max have 3 patients.

 

[footcloud]

Is it your home school though? This school has the mentality that they care about the training of their core medical students and everyone else, they could care less because they're full of themselves and believes everyone wants to go there. Totally different than another school I was just at where they really tried to sell me their program and got me super involved.

The issue is also not busy enough, so on call, the core medical students have dibs. It's a horrible system and mistake to come here. I don't want to judge just based on this one incident, but whatever. Yeah I think it's ridiculous for a M3 to take 5 as well, but I guess they want to look good for super eval.

 

[RySerr21]

The opposite actually, I'm a sub-I and the other people fighting for patients are another sub-I and a M3. The other sub-I, fine, whatever, which is still stupid, but the M3? I find it kind of ridiculous this person is hanging onto patients and not letting go. I don't know if it's the rationale that if they admit they patient, they must keep them. That's kind of stupid too though. The major issue is that it's not too busy.

The senior doesn't do anything about it really. Which kinda sucks. Forget about LOR here, I think I'll just use more time to study and learn.

That actually makes sense. Why wouldn't you follow the pts that you admit?

The biggest problem is it sounds like your senior sucks. He/she should be regulating the patient load and distributing equally among the students. How is it decided who gets an admit? It sounds like its just a free for all, which again, reflects on your senior resident. I'm not even sure how the other student would manage to grab all of those patients...i imagine they arent the one who is being paged directly when there is an admit. Is the senior just giving them to him/her? Either way....sorry dude!

 

[Mr hawkings]

That actually makes sense. Why wouldn't you follow the pts that you admit?

The biggest problem is it sounds like your senior sucks. He/she should be regulating the patient load and distributing equally among the students. How is it decided who gets an admit? It sounds like its just a free for all, which again, reflects on your senior resident. I'm not even sure how the other student would manage to grab all of those patients...i imagine they arent the one who is being paged directly when there is an admit. Is the senior just giving them to him/her? Either way....sorry dude!

Sounds like everytime an admit comes across the pager, the senior asks who want to do an admit and the same student volunteers to go do it and ends up keeping that patient instead of everyone taking turns to do admits

 

[footcloud]

Well it's more that it's their home school so they've been there longer, and have accumulated some chronic patients as well as still hogging their new admits. And sub-I's are not allowed to do as many call as the core students. Also luck of the draw, if your patients (whether you admit or not) are inactive or get all discharged. But regardless, I think that there should be more distribution and control from the senior.

What happens is that later on, the students end up going to the residents to try and get more patients. I don't know, it's the most bizarre situation I've ever encountered. Everywhere else, there was enough to go around for sure.