Best and Worst comments on clinical evals?

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"sardonic wit may be misconstrued as sarcasm"
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Best
-"she generates a differential diagnosis that I could only expect from a 2nd year pediatric resident"- Ambulatory Medicine
-"I have great expectations for this remarkable young woman and therefore, I strongly recommend her for any residency program she may wish to apply for without any reservation. I forsee her becoming chief resident in her program."-Ambulatory Medicine
-"excellent job! Well beyond her level of training and extremely impressive. Smart, hard working and pleasant to work with. The top 3rd year student I have worked with yet."- Emergency Medicine:love:

Worst
-"Need to find more procedures. ? if in general, there are not enough procedures for students":confused:- Emergency Medicine

I have a sneaking suspicion that my weakest evals will be in surgery (current rotation) but I will cross my fingers.
 
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Best: "one of the best med students...." This came from a chief resident that I only saw for 30 minutes. I sat quietly and watched him do an interview. That's it. No notes, no interviews, no presentations. Hmmm.

Worst: "very unprofessional." I knew that one was coming. Attending heard my fart during rounds. whoops. :hardy:
 
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PamIsHorny said:
Best: "one of the best med students...." This came from a chief resident that I only saw for 30 minutes. I sat quietly and watched him do an interview. That's it. No notes, no interviews, no presentations. Hmmm.

Worst: "very unprofessional." I knew that one was coming. Attending heard my fart during rounds. whoops. :hardy:
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lol...i just spit my drink all over my computer screen after reading that.....
 
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gunit07 said:
i had a similar comment on peds! i dont get them - they ENJOY torturing children??

i think some attendings assume that if you do an excellent job, you get an average eval, because excellence is expected. I had a family medicine attending try to convince me daily to go into family medicine, and every single patient was like, "wow, she's great! you should give her an A ++" and i got the eval and got straight 3/5s. i emailed her just to ask how i can improve upon my skills, and she replied saying i did a great job and i'll be successfull in whatever field i choose. she had NO suggestions for improvement! she just reaffirmed that i did a good job - so why not a good eval?!?!

it's so frustrating, becuase you know that there are some attendings who give people average evals even if they suck, just because they dont want to fail them.

grrrr!!
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A thing I have learned to do is explain my school's eval to attendings/residents that will be filling them out. This mostly pertains to the numerical section (my school's is 1-10 instead of 1-5). I've never had any probs, and it usually avoids a par performance eval. (If you're deserving)

Best: "Functioned at the level of an intern. Great personality that mirrored clinical knowledge and skills. We hope she will consider applying to our program" (From Vascular attending, in my 3rd year):D

Worst: "Needs to limit conversations with other attendings and hospital staff" (From IM resident)..........I found this really odd, and so did the program director at my exit interview. Apparently one of the residents preferred unfriendly mutes. Loser.
 
From my anesthesia attending:

"I enjoyed working with Ashers during her rotation. She wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon but yet always demonstrated great interest in learning about anesthesiology. She had good rapport with residents, OR staff, and patients. She has good base knowledge and good technical skills therefore I wish she would reconsider and pick anesthesia as her future career."

Grade: High Pass.

Now, when I'm on surgery and I see that attending, he still is trying to get me to do anesthesia. He's not happy it's my 2nd choice.

I'm still too annoyed by my OB/gyn grade and its weird variety of comments to put them here.
 
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LADoc84 said:
The only thing I have to say is that I think evaluations should have time limits on them. I had one really bad experience with an attending who wrote an eval after 3 months and got me completely mixed up with some other student that he must have really disliked.
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I agree. I waited 4 months for an Ob/Gyn evaluation that consisted of 4 sentences total. It was a good evaluation, but I was hoping for something a little longer, given the amount of time invested in the rotation. I've waited 10 weeks so far for my pediatrics eval.
 
From the surgery coordinator: "Student adequately met the requirements necessary to pass the clerkship. He scored below the class average on the Shelf exam." I got honors in all of my evaluations, though.
 
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Worst/Weirdest:
Family medicine - "Please review use of commas in written reports"

And yes, that made it into my Dean's Letter...
 
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shaka1223 said:
Worst/Weirdest:
Family medicine - "Please review use of commas in written reports"

And yes, that made it into my Dean's Letter...
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Well, I doubt any residency program director who views your Dean's letter is going to make a big deal out of that particular comment. Its a pretty stupid thing to put on a student evaluation.
 
[FONT=PrimaSans BT,Verdana,sans-serif]Two doctors from the same rotation:

Dr. Royal Jelly - "Histiocytosis rushed into diagnoses, took "initiative" in ordering labs in the office without consulting his preceptor"
Dr. Normal Medicine - "Histiocytosis is one of the best students that I have worked with this year. He has an incredible fund of knowledge for a 3rd year medical student and is constantly seeking novel learning opportunities and procedural skills"


One day in clinic the royal jelly doctor (so called because she tries to sell royal jelly to EVERY patient) got pissed at me because in my presentation of a patient I suggested a lab test... She went off on me for about 30 min about how I'm "just a third year medical student - I can't tell [her] what to do - she's one of the best family practitioners in the country!!"

This idea got into her head because she got a mailing from one of those "Who's Who" magazines and paid $50 to have her name listed. She even framed the letter and put it up in her waiting room.


Oh man, I have so many good stories from that rotation!
.
 
One comment from ob/gyn:
"domer621 had smooth clinical skills. He never appeared awkward on a rotation where many students do."

Uh, thanks?
 
Weirdest comment I received:
"Needs some jazzing up" :eek: Uhhhh, what??!!!!!!!!

This from my 88 year old surgery preceptor, very old school- retired but at the hospital 6 days a week! (He discussed cases with the students and gave us an oral exam at the end)
His days consisted of telling stories of the war and the good old days of surgery, while eating his PLATE FULL OF BACON for breakfast and smoking his pack of cigarettes daily.

I think he wanted me to put on some lipstick and curl my hair, then serve coffee to the surgeons in the OR! hahaaaaha :D

Honestly, it stunned me, then cracked me up. Needless to say, it was not in my dean's letter. The school said they didn't even know what it meant!!
 
"Average student, needs to study more" from a resident who worked with me for about 30 minutes. His eval carried at least 5-10% of my grade. He turned one in even though I did not ask him to.

I got excellent evals from everyone else, smoked the shelf, honored the clerkship, and smoked Step 2. Good call douchebag.
 
"functions far above her level" (c'mon, a lot of people get that, right?)

"is not afraid to ask questions" (is that an insult or a compliment? :D)
 
tig3r said:
Surgery, both comments from the same attending:

Positive: Good, concise notes. (Only good comment I received).

Negative: Physically weaker than other students in the past and he became tired easily. How will he handle a busy anesthesiology practice in the future if he tires this easily? I was not impressed with his fund of knowledge. He got less than 1/2 of my questions correct and it didn't seem like he was reading at night. I am interested to see how he performs on the shelf exam. Multiple times he would give wrong answers to the diagnosis and treatment when I asked him questions. Did not show much interest in any of the procedures nor ask many questions. Anesthesiology was not impressed by his fund of knowledge and my nurse thought he was more concerned with being liked than actually learning about surgery. His suturing skills were poor and he did improve but still much further behind than students of the past. He is an average student and will probably stay that way?


Ended up honoring the shelf exam and received a good evaluation from the clerkship coordinator.

I think I received the worst evaluation in medical school history but as they say, life goes on. :)
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What did you do to piss him off? This reads like he has some type of personal vendetta against you.
 
ginger_flower said:
I love the classic: "needs to read more" :mad: SUPER annoying....Shows absolutely no thought put into the comment.
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yes yes, I got one like that from IM person (not sure if it was attending or resident cause I couldn't even read their name)-->I got 95% on IM shelf. Then got a "needs a better reading comprehension" from surgery attending-->got 93% on the shelf. WHATEVER:mad:
 
"Very aggressive but in a good way" :smuggrin::smuggrin: from drum roll please.... a trauma surgeon.
LOL. I loved that rotation and that trauma surgeon but thought the comment was hilarious and heard it is high praise from him.

I was right- my worst comments to date are from GYN surgery and submitted by a resident who was not on my team and with whom I did not work with during my GYN surg rotation. I shall not sport with anyone's intelligence by recounting those remarks. Have to love it though. Sigh.

Three more days until 3rd year is over (cross fingers for shelf exams).
 
Obs/gyn: Acherona met all her expectations during this rotation

well that wasn't hard, since my expectations involved mainly avoiding getting splashed with amniotic fluid

Obs/gyn: Acherona is a conscientious and hard-working student

um, aren't they kinda the same thing?

IM (under the strengths category): Acherona type-wrote her notes

yea thank you maevis beacon. hopefully this inane comment will negate the other vapid things they wrote about me and reveal that hospital for being the medieval torture chamber that it is
 
Is type writing notes a bad thing? At least your notes can be read Acherona. There is a psych intern who I worked with that typed all his notes. I loved it.
 
vtucci said:
Is type writing notes a bad thing? At least your notes can be read Acherona. There is a psych intern who I worked with that typed all his notes. I loved it.
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It's highly frowned upon at my home hospital.

I guess it encourages copying and pasting, lack of thought, and possible privacy leaks.

Or it's just possible that the old-school attendings enjoy torturing the medicine interns with needless paperwork.
 
A lot of the residents end up copying their old notes and rewriting by hand-- keeping the same A&P and leaving spaces for any new findings on exam or in the subjective.
 
vtucci said:
Is type writing notes a bad thing? At least your notes can be read Acherona. There is a psych intern who I worked with that typed all his notes. I loved it.
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yea i think everyone should type their notes. however it's just sad that either they considered this novel and innovative on my part or that they just couldn't think of anything substantial to say about me after 2 grueling months...either way...
 
Worst: "Will make an excellent 4th year."

Man what a sly negative comment that was.

But I guess if by 4th year you rock star party animal then by golly you're right.
 
Did he mean that remark sarcastically or was he indicating that you were functioning above your peer level?
 
My favorite was my eval after my psych rotation ( many years ago)

Beneath the rough and somewhat unpolished exterior - lies a rough and somewhat unpolished human being
 
ABBY109 said:
My favorite was my eval after my psych rotation ( many years ago)

Beneath the rough and somewhat unpolished exterior - lies a rough and somewhat unpolished human being
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Wow. Just wow. It must have taken a great deal of restraint for you not to "refer" that tool to an ENT! :mad:
 
"She spent too much time reading psych"

Ummm..... it WAS my psych rotation.
 
Best: "most determined medical student I've ever seen..."

Worst: "it is immediately evident that Emily has severe difficulties in interpersonal relationships..." (I don't remember the exact quote, but something along those lines)
 
From my friends neurosurgery eval at the Mayo Clinic. One single word.

Perfunctory

 1 : characterized by routine or superficiality : mechanical <a perfunctory smile>
2 : lacking in interest or enthusiasm
 
So far nothing bad in the comments but still some puzzling grades on the individual skills part of our eval forms. Never impacted my final grade but certainly bizarre.

One attending HP'd me for patient presentation, he'd never allowed me to present a patient on rounds . . . soooo how exactly did you evaluate that skill mister?

Another Fellow HP'd my fund of knowledge. He went on to explain to me that it was because even he didn't have a "honors" level of knowledge, that it takes years to reach this level of "superior fund of knowledge" . . . I guess he didn't understand the implied "for a third year" part of the eval sheet lol.

My school also has grade inflation. Apparently if you are present and conscious you honor medicine . . . .
 
This wasn't terrible -- just odd. Under "Strengths", the doctor wrote, "Alert, punctual, consistent."

Alert? Well, I apparently succeeded in concealing my stupor on this two-week observational rotation :rolleyes:
 
This thread will live forever....just like Highlander.....
 
Since this thread has been revived I guess I'll partake:

Best:
"One of the best students to rotate on our service this year. Demonstrates a level of knowledge and patient ownership that is rare in students. Observed performing bedside procedures with ease. Always puts in the extra effort. Any residency program would be lucky to have him, but he deserves to be recruited to a residency here at _______"

Worst:
"Performance was adequate. Did not impress as a stand-out student. Did little above and beyond what was required"


Best thing is they came from the same rotation, different attendings...
 
I haven't had any negative comments per say (fingers crossed), but at our school, we can look at each evaluation if we want to.

Looking at mine, I got a satisfactory grade from this one ob/gyn resident who I saw twice. Once in the clinic where I was doing more work than she was. And another time in a parking lot where we were both illegally parking. I ran into her a few weeks after getting my eval. When she asked me what I wanted to go into, I was like "ob/gyn." Then she makes this funny face and is like, "oh really? I thought you wanted to go into family medicine."

complete b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t... especially when she was asking my mother (who is an ob/gyn) for a rec letter... WTF?
 
our school only includes positive remarks on the Dean's letter. Remarks that are meant as "constructive" are for "student use only."

I have no comments that stick out, but it's always interesting how attendings say good things about you that aren't true. :thumbup:
 
No negative ones so far. The ones that would be the closest are the generic constructive criticism ones that say:
'Continue to read more'

I had one weird one that gave me excellent comments, but then somehow was just given average grades, yet peers on the same team received some higher marks were the ones who often stumbled openly. Maybe the grades were mixed, or I was forgettable.

The best ones-

"braluk would be an excellent pediatric cardiologist if he chose to go into this field and would gladly recommend him for any residency and would have him on my team as an associate or partner anyday" (from the head of the department)

and a few other ones similar to it with the attending offering to write recommendations or actively persuading me to join their field. Plastics Surgery stood out with the head of the surgery dept there offering to contact his partners directly over at the school/residents/fellowships that they trained in for recommendation. Something I've always found to kind of funny is that having excellent and supportive attendings in fields I've never considered seriously open up my consideration of it, while less-than-average student involvement via attendings turn me off to it. Kind of unfair in a way that it's a crapshoot who you get and how it affects perception of it.
 
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