What do you guys make of this?

[Lolscan]

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I recently finished my medicine rotation. During the rotation I had a gut feeling that the interns didn't like me at all. I didn't say anything cuz I thought it wasn't too bad. I did everything that was required and always asked for more stuff to do. I knew my stuff and my verbal evaluation with the attendings were pretty good. However when feedback came around the intern that I worked with completely destroyed me. Some of the comments were either untrue or unfair. At that time I didn't say anything because the clerkship director was nice enough to recognize that this is abnormal and told me don't worry about it and that i'll probably get a high pass. Not all the evaluations were in yet but it seemed like it was over.

So 2 weeks ago the other medical student on my team got her evaluations back before me. She was completely shocked at her grade. Both her and I worked on the same team with the same intern. Her evaluations were shocking because her verbal evals were flawless. They were saying she was a "rockstar". But on paper she only got a "pass" (my school has a fail, pass, high pass, honors system). So she was completely shocked and really didn't understand how this happened. The moment she told me what happened, my gut feeling told me that I was ****ed myself as well. Something just told me that I was going to get a bad evaluation somehow and that the intern had something to do with it. Now 1 week ago, I get an email from the clerkship director telling me to come in again to discuss my evals (he thought they were bad). I was suppose to do it this week but he was busy so it got postponed till next week.

Now what do you guys think? Am I being paranoid or do you think the two of us got screwed by the team. I mean we were both pretty shocked at the evals. I don't personally think that I am a "ultra clinical rockstar" med student but I also knew I didn't **** up either. I thought I was gonna get a high pass like everyone else.

I mean am I being paranoid that the intern had probably talked **** and got both of us screwed? Both the other med student and I knew from the get go that the interns weren't our biggest fans. However I really feel like there is a knife in our backs and we're in a situation where we can't win. It's basically a he said she said kind of game. Sigh. What do you guys think I should say to the clerkship director?

 

[officedepot]

I don't really understand why the intern wouldn't like you... Why do you think that? What were the comments?

Also did everyone else of the team give you good evals? We can't really give advice without knowing what exactly happened.


I will add most med students (myself included) think we are the best ever and always deserve honors when in reality that is not the case. I think part of the problem is ourselves in that maybe we are showing the wrong attitude or say/do things that the resident/attending does not like but never get told how to correct the issue. The other part comes from those you are working with, residents and attendings, not ever letting you know their expectations. Also sometimes we just won't click on a level beyond the simple med student-resident relationship and we get kinda screwed. Finally sometimes residents are just douches and don't care about students.

Remember too that not every single student should get honors. A certain amount have to get that pass and high pass. Otherwise there would be no point in having a grading system in the first place. So a pass isn't the end of the world.

 

[mave]

I'll add that, in my experience during third year, the intern evaluations were generally not weighed as heavily as evaluations from my seniors and teaching attendings. I also found that seniors were more likely to write evaluations based on work ethic/ability to work in a team, etc., whereas teaching attendings commented more on knowledge base (and they usually have a pretty good idea of where you are and where you should be in that regard).

Some seniors expect a lot more from their medical students than others, and interact more with their med students. Others rely more on information from the interns about medical students. It's hard to know what's going on here without having seen your evaluations, but if your senior falls more into the latter category and you did *anything* to make your intern's life more difficult, or made a bad first impression that you couldn't correct or recover from, then you might have had a less-than-stellar eval from your senior, too.

Again, it's really impossible to know without knowing what your evaluations are.

 

[justaregularmed]

This sounds pretty typical welcome to the wild world of subjective evaluation.

I would wager to guess the clerkship director wants to find out who the giant douchebag is you or the intern.

 

[DarkHorizon]

I was in a similar situation last month, in fact our whole team was being bullied by an intern and a senior, and it showed on our evals. No one ever talked to us about expectations or what we did wrong, everyone told us we were fine, other than the usual "read more". We didn't do anything about it since we all passed the rotation, just bite the bullet as long as the eval was half decent. Or you'll be the subject of nonstop gossip amongst the housestaff and be labeled a problem kid. Don't want that reputation do you?

 

[SlickNickMD]

I really like my interns and attending and I hope it's mutual🙄

This is why I aim for a 90+ on every shelf exam, not taking any chances

 

[LMarie_MD2b]

I'll add that, in my experience during third year, the intern evaluations were generally not weighed as heavily as evaluations from my seniors and teaching attendings. I also found that seniors were more likely to write evaluations based on work ethic/ability to work in a team, etc., whereas teaching attendings commented more on knowledge base (and they usually have a pretty good idea of where you are and where you should be in that regard).

Some seniors expect a lot more from their medical students than others, and interact more with their med students. Others rely more on information from the interns about medical students. It's hard to know what's going on here without having seen your evaluations, but if your senior falls more into the latter category and you did *anything* to make your intern's life more difficult, or made a bad first impression that you couldn't correct or recover from, then you might have had a less-than-stellar eval from your senior, too.

Again, it's really impossible to know without knowing what your evaluations are.

Precisely. We don't get evaluated by interns at my school, but I think they get to voice their opinions, and they get carried into some of the seniors' or faculty evaluations (depending on the service).

I also agree with the other poster--best to give yourself the best odds and insulating your grade by crushing each shelf.

As far as this meeting goes, you may be in the fatal "he said, she said" dilemma, but you may also get a chance to explain things from your own perspective. Try not to stress out about it too much; this, too, shall pass.

 

[MsKrispyKreme]

Interns really shouldn't be evaluating anyone.

 

[sirenomelia]

Its the nature of the beast and luck of the draw.

I got the #1 score of my cohort on the OB/GYN shelf but my eval was torn to peices by these malignant wench residents I was stuck with even though I was up all night working q3 and did everything they asked except I refused to fetch food for them and take messages when their boyfriends called. I met with the clerkship director who just split the difference and gave me a B but the whole thing was unfair.

Other people in my class were given different assignments at private hospitals where they slept 7 hours every call night and interacted only with affable, friendly attendings and those students got A's or A/honors with lower shelfs.

 

[Lolscan]

Quick update

Two interns (one that I barely worked with) tore up my evaluation. In every category they gave me low pass/pass. Their comments were exaggerations.The attending gave me honors, and my shelf qualified me for honors. But those ****en bitches brought me down to high pass.

Oh well Im ok with a high pass. I Hope it doesn't **** me over for anesthesia or radiology or psych.

 

[Lolscan]

I suspect some racism playing here.

 

[justaregularmed]

Quick update

Two interns (one that I barely worked with) tore up my evaluation. In every category they gave me low pass/pass. Their comments were exaggerations.The attending gave me honors, and my shelf qualified me for honors. But those ****en bitches brought me down to high pass.

Oh well Im ok with a high pass. I Hope it doesn't **** me over for anesthesia or radiology or psych.

Did you refuse to do scutwork or something? lol.

It would seem to me that the course director was on the fence about your grade and you came out on the bottom unless your grade was going to be even lower.

I would develop some insight into the situation and figure out why this happened. It is completely possible (but unlikely) that two separate people just indiscriminately hate you. Take a moment to figure out what you did to piss these people off.

If you cant do this expect more of the same.

 

[Lolscan]

Did you refuse to do scutwork or something? lol.

It would seem to me that the course director was on the fence about your grade and you came out on the bottom unless your grade was going to be even lower.

I would develop some insight into the situation and figure out why this happened. It is completely possible (but unlikely) that two separate people just indiscriminately hate you. Take a moment to figure out what you did to piss these people off.

If you cant do this expect more of the same.

I agree with you on the insight and trying to figure out what went wrong. But you can't do anything if they simply don't like you. No i didn't refuse to do scut work. Hell I DID do their dirty work and then some. When they don't like you, they don't like you. That is all. The other medical student (who was an 4th year that honored med in her 3rd year) got ****ed hard too. Oh wellz.

The problem at my school for medicine is that inpatient is only 3 weeks. Outpatient is 3 week and the outpatient grade didn't count for jack. So your basically only with 1 team for the whole rotation. Its not the clerkship director's fault but he really only has a sample of n=1

 

[ScubaStarved]

x

 

[wannabeOBGYN]

Holy what? You only do three WEEKS of inpatient IM? And have three weeks of outpatient?

What do you do the rest of the year? And what does your FM rotation consist of? Not to derail the thread, but this seems highly unusual. We had 11 weeks of inpatient (4 specialty inpatient weeks with half-days of clinic some afternoons) and it felt "about right" for mastering most of the common admissions.

The whole situation sounds unfortunate: outpatient should count, IM should make up about 1/4 or 1/5 of the year, evals should be merit based and as objective as possible, personal conflicts should be brought into the open and dealt with if possible, etc. Why not call your school out by name for this one? This is the type of systemic shortcoming that pre-meds would (or should) find helpful in deciding between schools...

Agree. We had 3 months of IM, 2 inpatient and 1 outpatient. We also had 2 months of FM, a month of geriatrics (AKA more IM), 2 months of peds, and 3 months of rural medicine as a fourth year. Welcome to osteopathic medicine, where primary care is shoved down your throat.

 

[Lolscan]

Holy what? You only do three WEEKS of inpatient IM? And have three weeks of outpatient?

What do you do the rest of the year? And what does your FM rotation consist of? Not to derail the thread, but this seems highly unusual. We had 11 weeks of inpatient (4 specialty inpatient weeks with half-days of clinic some afternoons) and it felt "about right" for mastering most of the common admissions.

The whole situation sounds unfortunate: outpatient should count, IM should make up about 1/4 or 1/5 of the year, evals should be merit based and as objective as possible, personal conflicts should be brought into the open and dealt with if possible, etc. Why not call your school out by name for this one? This is the type of systemic shortcoming that pre-meds would (or should) find helpful in deciding between schools...

Yeah my school is weird. 2 years ago they condensed 3rd year so we get more electives. It's 3 weeks inpatient, 1 week admitting, 2 weeks outpatient. I kinda just lumped admitting and outpatient together. The up side to this schedule is that I get 6 weeks of electives on my third year =D ER, RAD and ENT here i come in 3 months =)

I would rather not name my school just yet. The issue has yet to be resolved for my buddy. The whole thing is annoying the hell out of me. Whatever, interns will be interns i suppose. It's a lesson for myself in the future when I am an attending.

 

[Rendar5]

I suspect some racism playing here since both of us are the same race.

Racism's alive and well for certain groups in certain areas, but you need to look beyond that to something you actually can change for your future evals. Y'know, modifiable risk factors and all that. Unless you feel like going for the MJ approach =p.

 

[Lolscan]

Racism's alive and well for certain groups in certain areas, but you need to look beyond that to something you actually can change for your future evals. Y'know, modifiable risk factors and all that. Unless you feel like going for the MJ approach =p.

Yeah I agree with you completely. I am taking this as an learning opportunity. Although I worry about my future classmates and lower classman.

 

[officedepot]

interns have a different perspective on how a student works than the attending.

I will reiterate that students often think they do a fantastic job no matter what. They will always blame others for a bad eval. Sometimes the evaluater is just hard but more times than not (esp if it is a pattern) the student is doing something wrong and doesn't realize it or is in denial.

OP, you did not say what your bad comments were. All you said was that you did nothing wrong. Don't jump to racism. I mean honestly take a look at the comments and learn from them. Also learn from the experience of dealing with crap residents. A HP will not destroy your chances for anything you might be interested in.

 

[Lolscan]

interns have a different perspective on how a student works than the attending.

I will reiterate that students often think they do a fantastic job no matter what. They will always blame others for a bad eval. Sometimes the evaluater is just hard but more times than not (esp if it is a pattern) the student is doing something wrong and doesn't realize it or is in denial.

OP, you did not say what your bad comments were. All you said was that you did nothing wrong. Don't jump to racism. I mean honestly take a look at the comments and learn from them. Also learn from the experience of dealing with crap residents. A HP will not destroy your chances for anything you might be interested in.

I just love the ego in these forums. You don't know my situation but you jump to the conclusions that I am a cocky ******* that can't take feedback. Someone is projecting much?

No I took a look at the comments and they are ****. Honestly. I have never gotten below a high pass (in any criteria) from anyone else so far. And these two interns give me a low pass for all the criteria. Oh btw if i was the only person that got low marks I would reconsider. But again if you read my post, you'll see that another medical student (who happened to be pretty damn good) also got shafted.

 

[Lolscan]

interns have a different perspective on how a student works than the attending.

I will reiterate that students often think they do a fantastic job no matter what. They will always blame others for a bad eval. Sometimes the evaluater is just hard but more times than not (esp if it is a pattern) the student is doing something wrong and doesn't realize it or is in denial.

OP, you did not say what your bad comments were. All you said was that you did nothing wrong. Don't jump to racism. I mean honestly take a look at the comments and learn from them. Also learn from the experience of dealing with crap residents. A HP will not destroy your chances for anything you might be interested in.

I just love the ego in these forums. You don't know my situation but you jump to the conclusions that I am a cocky ******* that can't take feedback. Someone is projecting much?

No I took a look at the comments and they are crap. Honestly i can't use any of it. I have never gotten below a high pass so far in any criteria from everyone else. And these two interns give me a low pass for all the criteria. Oh btw if i was the only person that got low marks I would reconsider myself. But again if you read my post, you'll see that another medical student (who happened to be pretty damn good) also got shafted.