Residency and fellowship evaluations

Started by RussianCommisar
This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Get help with your application

Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.

Browse articles Compare schools My application plan Read Interview Feedback
Practice for interviews Ask an Advisor
R

RussianCommisar

Fellowship
5+ Year Member
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
Hi everyone, so I am sure this has been discussed but, was wondering. I am in my last 4 month of fellowship. My evaluations have all been good in terms of Comments. But on that 1–5 scale, they never go beyond 3.5. My PD says it does not matter but do these numbers matter in terms of graduation requirement? I don’t really understand why the comments do not match the numbers to be honest...
 
RussianCommisar said:
Hi everyone, so I am sure this has been discussed but, was wondering. I am in my last 4 month of fellowship. My evaluations have all been good in terms of Comments. But on that 1–5 scale, they never go beyond 3.5. My PD says it does not matter but do these numbers matter in terms of graduation requirement? I don’t really understand why the comments do not match the numbers to be honest...
Click to expand...
The ACGME scale is all kinds of screwy. Based on their recommendations, interns should end up around a 2 and senior residents should end up somewhere around a 4 by the time they're done. 5 is like where an aspirational amazing over the board person would be. Of course, not all attendings are uniform in applying that... Given some just throw out 5s like candy.

Regardless, it's descriptive only. The evals (or their averages at least) are reported to the ACGME but aren't required to graduate or for anything else, except if your own PD/clinical competency committee has an issue with them.

If your PD says you're fine, you're fine.
 
RussianCommisar said:
Hi everyone, so I am sure this has been discussed but, was wondering. I am in my last 4 month of fellowship. My evaluations have all been good in terms of Comments. But on that 1–5 scale, they never go beyond 3.5. My PD says it does not matter but do these numbers matter in terms of graduation requirement? I don’t really understand why the comments do not match the numbers to be honest...
Click to expand...

If you were in trouble with meeting graduation requirements, your program would make no secret about it to you. Don’t overthink this one.
 
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
AdmiralChz said:
If you were in trouble with meeting graduation requirements, your program would make no secret about it to you. Don’t overthink this one.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Yeh like I said never had any bad comments or anything that was said to me that I was in any trouble but I hate that this 1 — 5 system exist . For some reason I thought you needed all 4s to graduate but sounds like it does not even matter, it’s just more of a guage for you and your PD...

I liked the 1-10 system better
 
There was a change a few years back where the acgme started recommending hat programs start evaluating based on "milestones." The intent, as mentioned above, is that a first year resident or fellow should be a 1 or 2 in most categories, and probably be a 3-4 by graduation. But there is no graduation requirement based on these numbers; furthermore, despite the idea that this should result in trainees receiving more relevant and honest feedback, in practice the evals are so long that I venture to say more than half of the attendings just pick a "good" number if you're doing fine, put that all the way down, and then offer some comments.

Seriously, read the descriptions of what constitutes a 4 or 5. Most attendings do not meet those descriptions. If they thought you were struggling, as mentioned above, you would know.
 
GoSpursGo said:
There was a change a few years back where the acgme started recommending hat programs start evaluating based on "milestones." The intent, as mentioned above, is that a first year resident or fellow should be a 1 or 2 in most categories, and probably be a 3-4 by graduation. But there is no graduation requirement based on these numbers; furthermore, despite the idea that this should result in trainees receiving more relevant and honest feedback, in practice the evals are so long that I venture to say more than half of the attendings just pick a "good" number if you're doing fine, put that all the way down, and then offer some comments.

Seriously, read the descriptions of what constitutes a 4 or 5. Most attendings do not meet those descriptions. If they thought you were struggling, as mentioned above, you would know.
Click to expand...

I don't care for the numbers because half of them aren't relevant and it's impossible to understand the rest.
 
GoSpursGo said:
Seriously, read the descriptions of what constitutes a 4 or 5. Most attendings do not meet those descriptions. If they thought you were struggling, as mentioned above, you would know.
Click to expand...

Absolutely true. I was going to discuss that as well, if you read the descriptions the concept that an intern should start at a 2 is also absurd. Most of the descriptions for 1-2 describe dangerous incompetence.
 
RussianCommisar said:
Hi everyone, so I am sure this has been discussed but, was wondering. I am in my last 4 month of fellowship. My evaluations have all been good in terms of Comments. But on that 1–5 scale, they never go beyond 3.5. My PD says it does not matter but do these numbers matter in terms of graduation requirement? I don’t really understand why the comments do not match the numbers to be honest...
Click to expand...

If they're going to let you graduate fellowship than you are fine.

The milestone method of evaluation is cumbersome and annoying. I'm sure the group of people who thought this up from the ACGME needed to justify their paycheck so they came up with this.
 
Raryn said:
Absolutely true. I was going to discuss that as well, if you read the descriptions the concept that an intern should start at a 2 is also absurd. Most of the descriptions for 1-2 describe dangerous incompetence.
Click to expand...
Well, most interns in July would be dangerously incompetent if they didn't have a senior and/or attending looking over their shoulder 🙂

In any case, the moral of the story that I think we all agree on is that the numbers aren't really useful or realistic.
 
Yeh... I honestly don’t care much as long as the GME lets me graduate. It’s a tad hurtful when you are running your own service and you don’t get recognition for that..

Also I am a 3rd year fellow and I was a chief resident... I don’t see why they should give me a 3 even in the first year if my fellowship for things like ‘competent in using EMR’ or ‘professionalism’ those things should have been covered in residency. It’s all really abstract , but just makes you think.

I am running a full clinic for them and it’s optional (i.e I chose to do it), been doing CME lectures for other sub specialties and primary care docs and I just feel it counts for nothing. ( well maybe something like I said their written comments are good, but the numbers don’t reflect it)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.