Started my first rotation. Hate it.

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hikikomori

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I'm on peds rotation. Hate it very much. I spend all day doing paperwork.. Hate to wake up 5:30 just to do paperwork and prepare for freakin' rounds. I have no feeling what these kids have (ie no empathy).. it does feel just another job.. another toil. I feel like quitting medical school altogether. Is this a normal feeling?
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hikikomori said:
I'm on peds rotation. Hate it very much. I spend all day doing paperwork.. Hate to wake up 5:30 just to do paperwork and prepare for freakin' rounds. I have no feeling what these kids have (ie no empathy).. it does feel just another job.. another toil. I feel like quitting medical school altogether. Is this a normal feeling?
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I didn't like my ward rotations either. You'll get through it and find something that fits.

In the mean time, hang tight.
 
hikikomori said:
I'm on peds rotation. Hate it very much. I spend all day doing paperwork.. Hate to wake up 5:30 just to do paperwork and prepare for freakin' rounds. I have no feeling what these kids have (ie no empathy).. it does feel just another job.. another toil. I feel like quitting medical school altogether. Is this a normal feeling?
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:laugh: Welcome to third year.
 
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hikikomori said:
I'm on peds rotation. Hate it very much. I spend all day doing paperwork.. Hate to wake up 5:30 just to do paperwork and prepare for freakin' rounds. I have no feeling what these kids have (ie no empathy).. it does feel just another job.. another toil. I feel like quitting medical school altogether. Is this a normal feeling?
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The first month or so of third year, I was so busy trying to get up to snuf on the day-to-day stuff of the wards (where to look for vitals, how to present on rounds, how to get stuff faxed over, how to write notes, making sure I took a thorough history) that it all felt like busy work, especially when you are still inefficient at it. But once I got that stuff down I found I could focus more on things like differential diagnosis, what do I want to order to work this patient up, what decisions are there to make on patient management today? On surgery, once you prove you know your way around the OR, then you get to throw some stitches, use the bovie. That's the fun stuff. And once you prove you can handle the rudimentary stuff you'll find the team more likely to trust your input on those things as well.
 
the six core specialties you do during third year generally suck, that's why they aren't competitive to get into.
 
hikikomori said:
I'm on peds rotation. Hate it very much. I spend all day doing paperwork.. Hate to wake up 5:30 just to do paperwork and prepare for freakin' rounds. I have no feeling what these kids have (ie no empathy).. it does feel just another job.. another toil. I feel like quitting medical school altogether. Is this a normal feeling?
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Yup, 100% normal. It's too late to quit and you know, deep down, that you're too type A to quit anything anyway. If all else fails remind yourself that you're training to do good work.
 
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I felt similarly after my first few weeks of third year. Once you get the hang of what you're doing things feel a lot better. Just give it time. If you decide once you've gotten the hang of things you still hate it, that specialty's probably just not your thing.
 
My first third year rotation was peds too, and I hated it also. It's sort of good, I think, for your first rotation to be a field you hate. You are going to suck, so you might as well suck during a rotation you have no interest in otherwise. It does get WAY better. So yes, as everybody else said, hang in there.
 
It's good to have rotations you hate because you have to cross lots of things off of your potential future career list. Now you can cross out peds and all its associated subspecialties and you're only a few weeks into 3rd year. Hopefully as the year progresses you'll find a few things that make you feel the polar opposite.
 
Superfrost said:
the six core specialties you do during third year generally suck, that's why they aren't competitive to get into.
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No, they aren't as competitive because you actually have to do work beyond 9-5 and don't make $500,000 a year. 😉
 
I'm on peds rotation. Hate it very much. I spend all day doing paperwork.. Hate to wake up 5:30 just to do paperwork and prepare for freakin' rounds. I have no feeling what these kids have (ie no empathy).. it does feel just another job.. another toil. I feel like quitting medical school altogether. Is this a normal feeling?
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Curious to know Op ... what were you original expectations of 3rd year and life beyond m1 m2?


work beyond 9-5 and don't make $500,000 a year.
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i think that kinda sums up the definition of "suck" when you have a choice to do the above or something that doesn't include these two conditions
 
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nlax30 said:
What 'till you get sick while on Peds..... will make you hate it even more.
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I pretty much stayed subclinically sick the entire month, then after my Shelf exam on the last day the kids gave me a huge going away flu so I could remember them during my weekend off.....ah the memories....
 
mglavin said:
i think that kinda sums up the definition of "suck" when you have a choice to do the above or something that doesn't include these two conditions
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Do you really find it unfathomable that people might want to do pediatrics or psych or IM or Family Med with high scores?

"Suck" means different things to different people. For me, I know I have no interest in being a plastic surgeon, or spending 75% of my day treating acne, or sitting in a dark room reading X rays instead of interacting with my patients.

For me, I want to get my hands dirty. I want to work with patients, and money isn't one of the top 5 reasons why I am doing this. (OK, maybe it does come in fifth😉).

In fact, I pretty much want to get my hands as dirty as possible. I want to be an Infectious Disease Specialist. That's out of IM. So my career will involve diarrhea, vomit, snot, parasites and who knows what else.

The initial poster seemed to have a tone of "Oh, look at all these cute little people who couldn't get into Rad/Onc." I dunno, it might just have been me.
 
i get to do peds from oct to nov... right at the beginning of flu season.. yipee.
 
I get to do Family Med in January. I'll see some weird stuff, too.
 
I start peds on Tuesday. I am thinking about stealing a plastic bubble from one of the kids with SCID to protect myself. Would need to be a big kid though.
 
DocDanny said:
Do you really find it unfathomable that people might want to do pediatrics or psych or IM or Family Med with high scores?

"Suck" means different things to different people. For me, I know I have no interest in being a plastic surgeon, or spending 75% of my day treating acne, or sitting in a dark room reading X rays instead of interacting with my patients.

For me, I want to get my hands dirty. I want to work with patients, and money isn't one of the top 5 reasons why I am doing this. (OK, maybe it does come in fifth😉).

In fact, I pretty much want to get my hands as dirty as possible. I want to be an Infectious Disease Specialist. That's out of IM. So my career will involve diarrhea, vomit, snot, parasites and who knows what else.

The initial poster seemed to have a tone of "Oh, look at all these cute little people who couldn't get into Rad/Onc." I dunno, it might just have been me.
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I went into 3rd year thinking I wanted to do peds or IM and wound up hating them. I don't like clinic and I hate inpatient.

I don't bash people that love that, and I encourage them to pick it. But it's not for me and if it's not for someone else, I'm not going to push them into it.
 
nlax30 said:
Haha, yeah. That's right about when I did mine last year. First day we had several confirmed H1N1 cases.... awesome.
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Yep I started right during the H1N1 outbreak here. I caught it from an Attending while I was still in NICU but this was before we realized that the nasal swabs had a very low sensitivity for H1N1 so I only got 2 days off and was back at it. (at the time school policy was that a + nasal swab meant you couldn't return to work until you were afebrile x24 hrs). I've never been so sick in my life. Ended up getting IVF at one point. Blech.
 
Law2Doc said:
Surgery has clinic, and most post-op patients end up inpatient for some period of time, meaning you round on them and do paperwork.
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True enough. Although I did find surgical rounds a bit more bearable (and much shorter) than medicine rounds.

I was just trying to give our surgical admin a hard time. 🙄
 
DocDanny said:
In fact, I pretty much want to get my hands as dirty as possible. I want to be an Infectious Disease Specialist.
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When I hear "get my hands dirty" I think surgery, is that just me? I mean medicine docs spend way more time rounding than with patients actually getting dirty. 😉

When you think about it, surgeons spend more time with patients than most other physicians (anesthesia too I suppose), just our patients are asleep (the best kind) 😀
 
Aphasic said:
When I hear "get my hands dirty" I think surgery, is that just me? I mean medicine docs spend way more time rounding than with patients actually getting dirty. 😉

When you think about it, surgeons spend more time with patients than most other physicians (anesthesia too I suppose), just our patients are asleep (the best kind) 😀
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The dirtiest of all is probably OBGYN.
 
DocDanny said:
The dirtiest of all is probably OBGYN.
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I'm gonna have to vote for colo-rectal.


As for hating the hospital, I cannot blame you...there is nothing, and I do mean nothing, more mind numbing than "rounding" on "medicine patients" as a student.

I like seeing patients in the outpatient setting, and surgery...as long as it doesn't involve the bowel, gall bladder, or appendix.

Anesthesia is AWESOME, but I couldn't see myself in that role for too long.

EM? That's FP without any control whatsoever.

Oh, and welcome to 3rd year. I've found the clinical portion of my education to be essentially a total waste of time thus far.
 
I get that you might not like it, but how can you consider it a "waste of time"? This is the year where you learn how to actually make a diagnosis and how to treat patients with meds and what not. To this point, this is the closest thing we've done to actually being a doctor.

I mean, what do they have you doing? Are they not teaching you how to write notes, make a diff, test and treat?
 
This should be one of the best times in med schools. Learnign and seeing patients. Much better than studying for COMLEX 2 or shelf exam.

Enjoy the process
 
I never said I wasn't enjoying it, for the most part....

Some of the last year has been miserable, but for the most part, it's at least been fun.
I just feel like these two years are kind of "filler time" and could be better utilized.

We'll see how I feel after finishing 4th year and moving on, but that's what it seems like now...paying all this tuition money for what? A piece of paper at the end that allows you to move on to the real training.

As for "playing doctor"...I think that's what annoys me. We can't/don't really DO anything...so that's the sense in which I feel it's a waste.

The rotations that are really bad are the ones where you either 1. Shadow a lot or 2. Actually DO get stuck doing the dirty work, only to be left without any real instruction.


My guess is this has a lot to do with the quality of clinical rotations.

I can definitely relate to the OP's plight...but I've not even considered quitting...I've just accepted that for these couple of years I'm not really doing anything other than paying a TON of money at 8% interest...and taking some really mundane tests...and waiting.
 
What do you expect them to let you do?

I mean, you are a third year. Compared to all of them, you know practically nothing.
 
DocDanny said:
What do you expect them to let you do?

I mean, you are a third year. Compared to all of them, you know practically nothing.
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Exactly. 🙂 I think I'm just over not making any money. Having left a job to do this probably has made it a little less tolerable.

I've had a lot of fun, and for the most part enjoyed it, but feel like this last year especially is a money grab. From the 1100 dollar "test" to the tuition paid for the year.
 
I also left a job to go into medical school. I wonder if thats common.

I was a pharmacy tech after college. I left that to start doing work as a phlebotomist/medical technologist.

All these jobs REALLY impressed my interviewers. Which made the difference because my MCAT was only a 29 and my GPA was a 3.67.
 
Beyond studying for shelf exams and Step 2, I really enjoyed 3rd year. Definitely were a couple rotations where it was more shadowing than anything else, but for the most part I got to see and do a fair amount.

I try not to think about continuing to pay tuition these last 2 years, oh well. 🙁

And I actually enjoyed inpatient IM and rounding. Was one of my rotations where I actually felt like I had at least some degree of autonomy..... coming up with my own A/P, presenting to resident and attending, discussing what to do next, etc... On an ambulatory slot right now (FP) and while I'm realizing I don't want to do strictly outpatient primary care, I do have a lot of autonomy and my attending will go along with my plan as long as it's reasonable and "indicated".
 
ShyRem said:
Too bad. I had a great time in third year.
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Agreed. 👍

I feel there is a definite mental/psychological component to 3rd-year. Sometimes, happiness is a choice that requires some effort.
 
It is completely normal to dislike the wards when you are first beginning. Everything is new and suddenly you realize that people won't baby you like they do in the first 2 years of medical school (at least in my school they did). You struggle to find a balance between getting what you need done and not getting in other people's way. It's hard to realize it so early but it does get better. You will get used to different attitudes, different styles and different ways of doing things in various floors of the hospital. You will develop a tougher skin and all the every day tasks (rounding, pre-oping, looking up labs, scrubbing, staying in on a surgery till 10pm at night because you have to etc) will all become second nature. You may still hate certain aspects of being a medical student but at least you will have developed some way to adapt.

Speaking as a 4th year now, I can tell you my first week (Ob/Gyn) was one of the worse I've ever had. I learned to go with the flow and not take anything too seriously and I ended up absolutely loving my third year.
 
Happiness is being able to read in down time if they aren't going to let you do anything. I'd much rather read than shadow in most instances. All the boredom and mundane "activity" got very old.

Surgery 'til 10pm? Awesome.

Rounding til 9 pm....suckage. Especially when you could have been done at 4pm if not for "personal business" of your attending that must have taken precedent.

Make no mistake....3rd year beats the HELL out of the first two.

I'm just ready to move on.
 
MJB said:
Happiness is being able to read in down time if they aren't going to let you do anything. I'd much rather read than shadow in most instances. All the boredom and mundane "activity" got very old.

Surgery 'til 10pm? Awesome.

Rounding til 9 pm....suckage. Especially when you could have been done at 4pm if not for "personal business" of your attending that must have taken precedent.

Make no mistake....3rd year beats the HELL out of the first two.

I'm just ready to move on.
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For me the worst part of 3rd year was the unpredictability.

I also learned that my final clinical evaluation was inversely proportional to the positive feedback I was given during the rotation: the more often I was told I was doing great, the more likely I was to be given a scathing or at best neutral evaluation.

By the end of 3rd year I had come to trust no one, and every compliment/encouraging word I met with skepticism and :scared:.
 
RisingSun said:
For me the worst part of 3rd year was the unpredictability.

I also learned that my final clinical evaluation was inversely proportional to the positive feedback I was given during the rotation: the more often I was told I was doing great, the more likely I was to be given a scathing or at best neutral evaluation.

By the end of 3rd year I had come to trust no one, and every compliment/encouraging word I met with skepticism and :scared:.
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That's one problem I have not had thus far. Every one of my preceptors has been very up front about things...and I've gotten great evals, so I'm thankful for that.
 
Winged Scapula said:
Anesthesia, Radiology or Pathology.😀
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Bingo. I made a bee line very quickly to these fields after a few 3rd year rotations.

Clinical medicine gets worse as you go through internship and residency. They make 3rd year look like a vacation. Call is the absolute worse thing ever invented.

If you can't stand 3rd year, seriously look at the specialties with limited patient exposure.

My rule of thumb for being happy in medicine: don't follow patients. If you have to follow patients whenever they stay in the hospital, your nights, weekends, and holidays are ruined. Somebody has to cover your patients if you go on vacation. This is why the legend of ROAD specialties persists.
 
DocDanny said:
Do you really find it unfathomable that people might want to do pediatrics or psych or IM or Family Med with high scores?

The initial poster seemed to have a tone of "Oh, look at all these cute little people who couldn't get into Rad/Onc." I dunno, it might just have been me.
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:laugh: I had the same impression DocDanny!

To the OP--I know it is hard being in the hospital which is a new environment and having to learn all of the ropes and meet all of these new people....but isn't it too soon to decide that you "hate" the entire field of pediatrics? Maybe you need to just cool it and hang tight.

To the other SubI's--why are the new third-years so dramatic? I mean, really? 😀 We were all scared but geez!
 
Taurus said:
My rule of thumb for being happy in medicine: don't follow patients. If you have to follow patients whenever they stay in the hospital, your nights, weekends, and holidays are ruined. Somebody has to cover your patients if you go on vacation. This is why the legend of ROAD specialties persists.
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I mean, geez, what are all of these patients thinking getting SICK and RUINING MY WEEKENDS!?! The nerve of some people and their illnesses. I didn't come to medical school to be inconvenienced! I'm way too important for that!! 😎

Good thing I'm not a doctor. Oh, wait. :laugh:
 
jackieMD2007 said:
I mean, geez, what are all of these patients thinking getting SICK and RUINING MY WEEKENDS!?! The nerve of some people and their illnesses. I didn't come to medical school to be inconvenienced! I'm way too important for that!! 😎

Good thing I'm not a doctor. Oh, wait. :laugh:
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Spoken like a med student. :laugh: Good luck to ya. :meanie:
 
MJB said:
Salvation! I'm finally on a rotation that's awesome...this is what they should all be like.
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👍

So what are you on? And what makes it awesome?

Looking back on 3rd year I definitely a few more than the others, and not only because of the specialty. The environment, attending, other students, etc... can all make or break it.
 
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