Trying to relax during third year

[mapleleaf2]

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Currently in the middle of my third year and definitely enjoying it. But I've been finding that I'm always getting nervous and anxious although I'm a pretty laid back person. At the moment, I don't really know what I want to do, which is okay with me. I haven't ever had a bad experience with a doctor as of yet (crossing my fingers). But I still find myself getting hypervigilant and just unable to kick back and relax. Is there anything you guys found helpful during third year to keep yourselves focused on school but not stress out too much?

 

[ropeadope1983]

Currently in the middle of my third year and definitely enjoying it. But I've been finding that I'm always getting nervous and anxious although I'm a pretty laid back person. At the moment, I don't really know what I want to do, which is okay with me. I haven't ever had a bad experience with a doctor as of yet (crossing my fingers). But I still find myself getting hypervigilant and just unable to kick back and relax. Is there anything you guys found helpful during third year to keep yourselves focused on school but not stress out too much?

It depends on how much you care about perfect grades and how much you care about what others think of you. If you recognize that a big part of your clinical grades is determined in a subjective manner by what your attendings (and in some schools, residents) think of you, then you might also recognize that this means a big part of your clinical grades can be out of your hands depending on what situation you might be in. I've already found that some attendings think very highly of me (and openly say that) for little reason in my opinion because I gave them very little to evaluate me on. One attending only really saw me for a few minutes every morning and only saw one or two of my patient notes, yet apparently this was enough for him to tell me that I'm several standard deviations above my peers. Counter that with one of the evals a resident gave me in which he gave me 3 out of 5 for everything he evaluated me on (which is oddly designated as "good") when I really got to know this resident, worked my rear off with him every day for several hours every day, and actually got along with him quite well and received a lot of excellent verbal feedback. When it came right down to it, his 3 out of 5 eval earned me only 60% of almost 9 possible points he was allotted towards my final grade in that clerkship. What if several others evaluated me the same way for that clerkship? I'd be screwed if I had my heart set on pass with honors.

Obviously you also have to keep in mind that these shelf exams can be somewhat random and at times do not correlate very well with what you know or how hard you worked.

My advice to you is to determine how much you really care about perfect grades and how much you really care about what people think of you. I'm not saying you should rub people the wrong way, but you might be less anxious and much happier if you take some of that pressure off yourself. Do what I do and think to yourself: "I'm going to work hard, I'm going to learn a lot, I'm going to have fun, I will not be scared of questioning people (tactfully of course) because I will not be worried about how they will eval me, and I will not have regrets even when the grades are in because I know at this level it is far more important what I get out of these experiences than what some stranger says after the fact what he/she thinks I got out of them"

 

[cpants]

It depends on how much you care about perfect grades and how much you care about what others think of you. If you recognize that a big part of your clinical grades is determined in a subjective manner by what your attendings (and in some schools, residents) think of you, then you might also recognize that this means a big part of your clinical grades can be out of your hands depending on what situation you might be in. I've already found that some attendings think very highly of me (and openly say that) for little reason in my opinion because I gave them very little to evaluate me on. One attending only really saw me for a few minutes every morning and only saw one or two of my patient notes, yet apparently this was enough for him to tell me that I'm several standard deviations above my peers. Counter that with one of the evals a resident gave me in which he gave me 3 out of 5 for everything he evaluated me on (which is oddly designated as "good") when I really got to know this resident, worked my rear off with him every day for several hours every day, and actually got along with him quite well and received a lot of excellent verbal feedback. When it came right down to it, his 3 out of 5 eval earned me only 60% of almost 9 possible points he was allotted towards my final grade in that clerkship. What if several others evaluated me the same way for that clerkship? I'd be screwed if I had my heart set on pass with honors.

Obviously you also have to keep in mind that these shelf exams can be somewhat random and at times do not correlate very well with what you know or how hard you worked.

My advice to you is to determine how much you really care about perfect grades and how much you really care about what people think of you. I'm not saying you should rub people the wrong way, but you might be less anxious and much happier if you take some of that pressure off yourself. Do what I do and think to yourself: "I'm going to work hard, I'm going to learn a lot, I'm going to have fun, I will not be scared of questioning people (tactfully of course) because I will not be worried about how they will eval me, and I will not have regrets even when the grades are in because I know at this level it is far more important what I get out of these experiences than what some stranger says after the fact what he/she thinks I got out of them"

We're on the x/5 system for subjective evals too. The system is mind boggling. At our school 5/5 is a 95%. So the max you can get is a 95% on the subjective portion, yet the class is graded out of a 100% scale. We also have the 3 out of 5 as "good", yet 3s/5 will earn you a 60% and a fail in the course. Strange stuff.

 

[ZagDoc]

Massage. Seriously, its worth the money. Schedule it on a post-call day or something, but I try to get one at least once a month.

 

[ropeadope1983]

We're on the x/5 system for subjective evals too. The system is mind boggling. At our school 5/5 is a 95%. So the max you can get is a 95% on the subjective portion, yet the class is graded out of a 100% scale. We also have the 3 out of 5 as "good", yet 3s/5 will earn you a 60% and a fail in the course. Strange stuff.

Yeah, it sucks. It's almost like they designed the system to promote people who are good at kissing rear. If I were going for one of the very competitive specialties and/or in a very competitive residency program I'd probably go nuts! I know a guy who's like that. He's going for one of the more competitive "ROAD" residencies and really wants to go to an elite program. It's so obvious that he's just overly concerned about his eval all the time to the point where he doesn't really seem concerned about learning while he's on rotation. It seems like his whole reason for being in his clinical rotation is to serve as a bobble-head doll who nods his head at everything the attending says so he either looks like he understands or already knows what's being said, rather than actually think about what's being said and maybe question what's being said from time to time if it doesn't seem to jive with reality (which has happened more often than you'd like to see unfortunately). The fact is that attendings don't always say the right thing and they can often catch themselves and recognize that they said the wrong thing a few moments later and you risk looking like an idiot of you're just sitting there bobbing your head up and down like a dumb bird in agreement at something that's blatantly wrong. You respect yourself and I've found that much more often than not everyone else respects you too if you have the courage to stand up to what's being said if you think it's wrong. That way you also have the benefit (to yourself and your patients) of getting the right answer and stop perpetuating the spread of wrong information.