disagree with your post my friend. There are well known specialties where attendings can be malignant and get ticked off. Some like to pimp and consider that teaching and grade students harshly rather than introduce their specialty. A prime example was in a rotation ahead of me when one of the best students I know in terms of respect, care, and love for learning were unfairly screwed. The attending left that student for hours with staff that told the student they had nothing for them to do. While the student used that time to read up, the attending had a hidden agenda. They did something similar with another student but since they were not under them, this attending's odd behavior went unchecked. The attending purposefully left my colleague with no duties and left them to seem like they did nothing. This was all the while when other students were allowed to do much more. The colleague reached out to me to express their concern just to share their misery but unfortunately, a negative remark was left in that student's eval and the student was very distraught like I imagine they would be. Sometimes coming in ahead of time and doing your job as a student doesn't always work. Some attendings try to intentionally trip you up and hide their bullying behavior behind closed doors. There were a couple instances where this was present and I myself was able to endure it, but unfortunately as a medical student we don't have any power as to how an attending frames the situation except to tell yourself that this too shall pass.
Rules to follow in clinical clerkship in summary:
1. DO NOT share personal info with your attending: doesn't matter if they do...who knows if they are making that up. Keep it minimum and think 10 steps ahead what the attending's agenda is
2. DO NOT trust the experience of your colleagues to a tee. In fact, don't ask about an attending's personality, ask about things that attending likes students to do. Especially ask about what the attending doesn't like students to do. Introspect more out of colleagues who don't share much of their experience and tell you to chill. If they aren't willing to paint a more detailed picture than ask another person. DO NOT LET YOUR GUARD DOWN!!! IF you go too in detail about the attending's manner/creepiness, you may prematurely judge them too harshly/nicely based on how your colleague's perspective. The thing is that your colleagues only share these things in privacy but you taking it to the first day of rotations may make it seem like YOU are stirring this perspective. In the end if the experience ends badly because of a biased assumption, you may seem like the lone kid crying foul. It sucks that colleagues will only voice their concern if they get screwed but won't share details of weird encounters if they get a good grade...sucks to suck.
3. Your site dean is no use, your course director is no use. If you are miserable with an attending who gets pissed at you even stepping on a dry leaf, you need to voice that concern early or fix that problem on your own asap
4. Once you get an eval, you will never get it changed
5. Work hard but balance that with the written exam like it's nobody's business. NEVER argue about an eval unless your attending personally told you that you did great and this is your grade but then you ended up with something much less stellar...so maybe to clarify but still it's in your best interest
6. Attendings may talk in between different specialties and depending on who has it out for you for some reason, again try to be submissive and do your best not to fight back. This is just one year out of the many you have for residency.
7. Be respectful at all times to everyone
8. Get to know your attending but don't be annoying. If you sense that your personality doesn't gel or that an attending scares you, try to take a step back and evaluate how your next step can be better. Use this opportunity to gel with all personalities, it's ok if someone just doesn't after those attempts.
9. Your colleagues are your competition, do not commiserate too much with them but don't be a jerk either. Try to strike a balance and when talking about rotations and specific attendings, try to talk about constructive feedback on how you can do better in that rotation.
10. If you have rotation specialty that you think you might switch into, start gathering mentors in your site ASAP. Time goes by fast and unfortunately, you may not get the chance later.
11. Lastly, Life has a plan for you. Don't get disheartened if things don't work out with people. Don't assume you're a bad person/lower your self-esteem because someone was terrible to you. Pick yourself up and keep going, tell yourself that only you have the ability to define yourself. Take that to heart and never stop. I've had a couple jobs before medical school and trust me when I say this, people don't get better the higher you go, they just get smarter in the way they try to lead you down and they do that like they have had a camera attached to their hip all the time and think that snippeting moments out of context will legitimize their claim. But guess what? You get smarter too and if you try to capture and record your day to day work and present that to the people around you, it doesn't matter what one person thinks, it's all about how the rest will think. Always try to have someone big on your team vouching for you. That isn't possible in rotations but going forward in life, have a coach, have a cheerleader, have that village that protects you and go out to bat for you.
Anyways hope this helps. These are just a few tips I got from my colleagues and thought this thread might be perfect for other students who are just starting on rotations to hear. I wish I had known this but cheers to you guys and hope you handle your odd situations well. Always remember, it's never just you if you had a bad experience as long as you are respectful. Also know that students who know how to argue their case well will always have things work in their favor. If you don't, don't let that one bad experience define you. Take it for what it is, an experience you were bound to experience. Some of your colleagues who don't come across this at this stage will definitely come across it later. Your job is just to dissect that event and try to go in differently the next time. That's all anybody can do
