Reprocautions for leaving bad resident reviews?

[hopefulmed]

I was just wondering if anyone had any bad experience with leaving bad comments about residents/chief residents who you have terrible experience with. I'm completing one of my rotation and the chief resident I'm working is a miserable person and making my rotation a terrible time. We are allow to comments on our faculty and residents at the end of the rotation and they would not get the comments until our grades are submitted.

I don't want to cause any trouble, but I think that the clerkship director should be aware so that future students wouldn't have to deal with the BS. Either way, I'm just worry that this brutal honesty might come back to bite me in the butt. It will be obvious to the resident that I was the one leaving the comment since I'm the only medical student at this site. I have no interest in the field that the resident's in, so my question is, can this person still potentially screw me over?

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[Top Gun]

I was just wondering if anyone had any bad experience with leaving bad comments about residents/chief residents who you have terrible experience with. I'm completing one of my rotation and the chief resident I'm working is a miserable person and making my rotation a terrible time. We are allow to comments on our faculty and residents at the end of the rotation and they would not get the comments until our grades are submitted.

I don't want to cause any trouble, but I think that the clerkship director should be aware so that future students wouldn't have to deal with the BS. Either way, I'm just worry that this brutal honesty might come back to bite me in the butt. It will be obvious to the resident that I was the one leaving the comment since I'm the only medical student at this site. I have no interest in the field that the resident's in, so my question is, can this person still potentially screw me over?

I'd go ahead and be honest when its time to evaluate this resident. If your comments about the resident won't be seen by him until after your grades have already been turned in, what's he going to do? He's already evaluated you.

 

[persia]

I wouldn't say anything, can you just leave the eval blank? They say these things are 'anonymous' but that's BS. When they print them out they are usually by rotation, dated and all.

I would not risk it. If the chief is such a terrible person that will spread by word of mouth. No need to do it yourself. And just because they are in a different field from what you want to go into, don't think that they don't have friends in the field you are interested in. Believe me, word of mouth goes both ways. I think selective mutism is the way to go until you graduate residency.

 

[chaser08]

I agree that if it isn't going to be seen until after grades are handed out, what difference does it make? He's going to be honest in his eval, why shouldn't you be honest in yours? Would you feel differently if you knew he was going to give you a less than stellar evaluation? That being said, I understand your reservation and, depending on how strongly I felt, I may or may not do it.

During my third year, I decided to be completely honest about a resident not because of how she treated med students, but how she treated patients. It was on OB and she would ignore dangerous rhythm strips for hours (this isn't just med student panic - the attending would come in and look at the strips and ask why no one had done anything about it), tell students not to write down or notify attendings of dangerous values, and left a patient on Mg for several days when it was supposed to be d/c after 1 day. She would argue with attendings, belittle students, and was an overall miserable person. In my eval, I wrote down these instances and stated that I thought that she was the type of doctor that would kill patients because of her arrogance.

It turned out that I wasn't the only one who had been candid about this particular doctor, but I will note that there were about 10 of us who wrote evals at the same time so I had a pretty good idea that I would remain anonymous. I don't know what repercussions she felt, but I know that I never received any retribution for my statements. In fact, I have run into that resident since then and she has been very friendly so I know that she has no idea that I wrote that statement.

I don't think I've ever written a bad eval on a resident for personality differences - I've definitely had my share of a$$holes. However, personality differences are pretty nebulous and what one person finds "annoying", another person finds "challenging" and "stimulating". In that case, I will leave the questionnaire blank or give the person a rating of "average". If it's something that affects patient care, then I feel that this is something that needs to be brought to the program director's attention and I make sure to site specific examples of transgressions. Saying "She's a bad doctor. And mean." means nothing.

 

[Tired]

After my Ob/Gyn rotation as an MS3, I left brutal evals for most of the residents. In retrospect, I'm a little embarassed. Despite the fact that they were incredibly cruel and unpleasant people, I think I ended up crossing the line with some of my comments.

They kept mentioning to the next block of students that they "knew it was [me] who wrote those awful things."

There were no reprocussions. I was never going to go near Ob again, so what the hell did I care what the thought? Hell, I would never let my wife go to any of them either, they were so awful.

Once your block is done, as long as you don't need a letter of rec from the staff, aren't planning on doing any MS4 rotations with them, and the PD isn't one of your admin people, there is absolutely nothing they can do to you.

 

[getunconcsious]

I believe the word you are looking for is spelled Repercussion. Maybe they were mean b/c your spelling in your progress notes was so atrocious.

 

[Hard24Get]

I was just wondering if anyone had any bad experience with leaving bad comments about residents/chief residents who you have terrible experience with. I'm completing one of my rotation and the chief resident I'm working is a miserable person and making my rotation a terrible time. We are allow to comments on our faculty and residents at the end of the rotation and they would not get the comments until our grades are submitted.

I don't want to cause any trouble, but I think that the clerkship director should be aware so that future students wouldn't have to deal with the BS. Either way, I'm just worry that this brutal honesty might come back to bite me in the butt. It will be obvious to the resident that I was the one leaving the comment since I'm the only medical student at this site. I have no interest in the field that the resident's in, so my question is, can this person still potentially screw me over?

You should definitely be honest in your eval, but remember to be professional. You don't have to "cross the line" as Tired regretted doing. For instance, if someone has a nasty attitude and belittles you, you can write, "While Dr. X sees to have a strong grasp of her field, she can be rather brusque with students and nurses, and often adopts a condescending attitude. This behavior is incompatible with learning." instead of "she's a nasty b****". Your comments will likely be taken more seriously this way, as well.

 

[MeowMix]

I've been tempted to do this many times and never did. All I can say now is, I am SO glad I didn't. You NEVER know when you will end up working with this person again and it will bite you in the ass. Even if they are in a different field, they can easily end up rotating/moonlighting/working at the very hospital where you are a resident or even a doctor with lesser prestige and power. This is a small world. And they can spread poison about you to attendings. The potential consequences for you can be really, really bad.

If it is an issue of patient safety, that's another thing. Straight-on harassment should be dealt with directly, not in an anonymous written eval. But if the person is just evil, unpleasant, and awful to work with? Their program already knows. They already have attendings with similar problems. This is nothing new. If you can avoid it, just don't turn in an eval or make it very vague.

 

[hopefulmed]

Thank you everyone for your input, I decided to go ahead and write honestly how I feel and what I had to deal with. And thank you getunconcsious, SDN spelling police, for helping me realize the reason why I was being treated so poorly on my clerkship.

 

[getunconcsious]

Thank you everyone for your input, I decided to go ahead and write honestly how I feel and what I had to deal with. And thank you getunconcsious, SDN spelling police, for helping me realize the reason why I was being treated so poorly on my clerkship.

I'm sorry it truly was a joke 😉 I always think people will realize that when I correct their spelling, but they never do....

Seriously, was it an OB/Gyn clerkship? If so you can't take it personally, those women are...well I'll stop before I get myself in trouble.

 

[MadameLULU]

Lol at the two of y'all

My answer is yes, and I certainly have done this. I rotated through a surgical subspecialty and the chief was an absolute *****!! He was a transfer into the program a year ago, so he wasn't "home grown" and his surgical skills were terrible. I had no respect for him because he had complete disregard for sterile technique. Seriously, he would say, "I don't care about sterility" I saw him take his dirty gloves (No, he was NOT double gloved) off and cavalierly put them on the table on top of instruments during a procedure. I also saw him put a scope up to his eye and then place that scope down on a sterile field (also on top of instruments). And this "surgeon" when on and on about he he was doing HIS BEST for the patients. In reality, he was putting the patient's at risk for wound infections!

 

[Tired]

You don't have to "cross the line" as Tired regretted doing.

It's taken me a long time to understand that bad people can be good doctors, and good people can be bad doctors. I'm much more understanding of the former than the latter. If I had realized this as an MS3, I wouldn't have been so nasty in my evals.

At the end of the day, all that matters is whether or not docs do right by their patients, which I have to admit the Ob/Gyn residents did - at least to the best of their limited abilities.

 

[H_Caulfield]

"Reprocautions"? Are you serious?

Nobody's going to care about the content of your reviews when it's clear that someone with the mentality of a 12-year-old wrote them. You didn't just misspell; you've indicated that you don't understand anything about the derivative of the word. "Percussions" is the root you're looking for, meaning to be hit or smacked, as you're implying you might be in REsponse (oh, wow...the prefix part!) to your negative (probably misspelled) reviews, and as I'm saying you should be for posting a made-up word like that.

That's right. I'd like to smack you right now

 

[Frijolero]

"Reprocautions"? Are you serious?

Nobody's going to care about the content of your reviews when it's clear that someone with the mentality of a 12-year-old wrote them. You didn't just misspell; you've indicated that you don't understand anything about the derivative of the word. "Percussions" is the root you're looking for, meaning to be hit or smacked, as you're implying you might be in REsponse (oh, wow...the prefix part!) to your negative (probably misspelled) reviews, and as I'm saying you should be for posting a made-up word like that.

That's right. I'd like to smack you right now

That would be "derivation". Now someone come get me!

 

[leechy]

I dunno, I feel like dishonesty on evals perpetuates a culture of abuse. Especially since those residents are going to be 'honest', or sometimes downright nasty, on their evaluations of you. They may be your colleagues in the future, but you'll be THEIR colleagues. It goes both ways.

 

[bjackrian]

I believe that as long as it's kept professionally phrased/worded, you should write your honest evaluation of the rotation. I also do little things that you've probably heard a thousand times (like using "I feel" or "I think" to preface negative comments) to tone down the level of my comments, and I do try to suggest what I'd do differently.

Example for poor teaching: Dr. X clearly cared about students learning when we interacted with him. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend many of our teaching rounds sessions. I felt that when he did come, he expected the students to teach for him with student presentations and that he contributed little to our knowledge of the topic. I think I would have learned more if he had done more teaching during the sessions instead of relying on students to do the work.

Example for bad personality: Dr. X obviously understands his subject very well. I felt that his knowledge was not effectively communicated to the students because of his brusque demeanor and lack of respect for students. It was difficult to learn in a hostile learning environment. I am disappointed that I was not able to learn more from him and hope that he can be a more effective teacher in the future by expressing more respect for students.

(Incidentally, these are not real examples, just things I made up on the spot.)

 

[Midwest Medic]

Unless you are citing secific examples of what happened between you and that resident, they will never know who left the evaluation. If you cite a incident that is very memorable for that resident, they will know who you are. I haven't heard of any residents (at least at my institution) making the student's life hell. I am sure that it does happen though...

 

[taurus70]

Don't feel bad about the typing mistakes. I was born with two left thumbs also.

If you can keep your comments on a professional level, you will never go wrong. I can emphasize with you. 4 weeks into my medicine core, the fellow called us into the conference room and to our bewilderment ripped us all concerning the "meaning of professionalism". This person then increased our call schedule and added patients to our workload, new lectures, (you get the drift) and then informed us , "I don't care how many hours that you are working now.... You have no Bell Comission protection". The reason for this was that the previous students had just ripped the interns, residents, and etc. We hadn't done anything wrong yet. The fellow had just been ripped by the site coordinator and water flows downhill. I didn't want to make things worse for those who follow me so I didn't blow my cool during our exit interviews. Tired people sometimes do and say things they don't mean.

 

[persia]

I don't know if anyone has ever seen the actual evals after they are completed and complied, but we were told over and over that it would all be anonymous and the comments would all be scrambled so it would be impossible to know who said what when.

Wrong. They are compiled by date and if there are three people with you on service then you will be one of three. If someone was so inclined they could extrapolate personalities into comments. Is that a decent thing to do? no of course not. It's ridiculous. But, people being people it is done. All I'm saying is that life is short and punishment can be long, very long if you p*ss off the wrong people. And that includes unhappy and overworked residents, who do have friends on other services. It is not worth it. Besides, these problems were here long before we were, and they continue because the culture allows/wants them. It is not our job to fix someone else's problem. I apologize if I sound cynical but - I am.