D
deleted994247
not an expert, I just disagree with you 
respectfully ofc
respectfully ofc
Chronically overworked
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seems like she is just abusing the system and getting you to do all the dirty work. This is not "learning" at all! You dont need to learn how to write notes, you master that crap in residency. Report this
No...I felt it bad practice to ask...but now that I think of it, may have been fair to do so at least once
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Thanks. Will mention it in evals
Update-
I talked to her about the "case report." She isn't sure if she's publishing it. But upon me asking earnestly, agreed, if it does get published I too get credit
That said, she asked me a ton this afternoon about my readings into it-was one of those "out there" cases-and to paraphrase, to have answered her properly would have needed hours of research, not the kind of thing you can do on the side one evening when shelf is coming up. I professionally told her it's very interesting, I wish I could look into it more-but am stressed for shelf and will look into it during the early days of my January rotation. Seemed she appreciated my enthu for following up during a new rotation. Was she upset I didn't do it all this week? Maybe. or maybe not. Who knows. But I also know it is impossible to do everything at once.
Thanks everyone for your guidance. And Happy Holidays
I talked to her about the "case report." She isn't sure if she's publishing it. But upon me asking earnestly, agreed, if it does get published I too get credit
That said, she asked me a ton this afternoon about my readings into it-was one of those "out there" cases-and to paraphrase, to have answered her properly would have needed hours of research, not the kind of thing you can do on the side one evening when shelf is coming up. I professionally told her it's very interesting, I wish I could look into it more-but am stressed for shelf and will look into it during the early days of my January rotation. Seemed she appreciated my enthu for following up during a new rotation. Was she upset I didn't do it all this week? Maybe. or maybe not. Who knows. But I also know it is impossible to do everything at once.
Thanks everyone for your guidance. And Happy Holidays
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It honestly seems like she was trying to see how much she could get out of you. Its kinda like the substitute teacher everyone tries to see how far they can go. At the end of this very stressful process, OP maybe do some introspection and see if you missed opportunities to stand up for yourself.
You are right, probably should have politely stood up for myself. It's okay...lesson learned
D
deleted994247
That’s libertynne’s book recommendation
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Update-
I talked to her about the "case report." She isn't sure if she's publishing it. But upon me asking earnestly, agreed, if it does get published I too get credit
That said, she asked me a ton this afternoon about my readings into it-was one of those "out there" cases-and to paraphrase, to have answered her properly would have needed hours of research, not the kind of thing you can do on the side one evening when shelf is coming up. I professionally told her it's very interesting, I wish I could look into it more-but am stressed for shelf and will look into it during the early days of my January rotation. Seemed she appreciated my enthu for following up during a new rotation. Was she upset I didn't do it all this week? Maybe. or maybe not. Who knows. But I also know it is impossible to do everything at once.
Thanks everyone for your guidance. And Happy Holidays
It sounds like you handled this beautifully. Also sounds like she was very receptive to your concerns. Hope this trend continues!
Thanks for your support
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Man.... I must be one of the easiest preceptor. When M3/4 are in my ER, all I really expect is they show up on time. They do like 12 shifts a month and they are 8 hr long.
They go see about 5-6 pts a shift first just to get their feet wet and I expect nothing otherwise. Them charting for me would waste more of my time correcting stuff and what do med students really learn from navigating through EMRs? I let them go typically 2 hrs early while I am cleaning up readying myself to go on time. I go to the cafeteria 3-4 times a day to eat, get coffee, and just get out of the ER.
Your rotation sounds horrible but there is nothing malignant about it. Its a month, a good learning experience, you get tested in the fire alittle. No reason to rock the boat.
They go see about 5-6 pts a shift first just to get their feet wet and I expect nothing otherwise. Them charting for me would waste more of my time correcting stuff and what do med students really learn from navigating through EMRs? I let them go typically 2 hrs early while I am cleaning up readying myself to go on time. I go to the cafeteria 3-4 times a day to eat, get coffee, and just get out of the ER.
Your rotation sounds horrible but there is nothing malignant about it. Its a month, a good learning experience, you get tested in the fire alittle. No reason to rock the boat.
Being in outpatient and working extra shifts-because I'm being made to work for people who are not my preceptors...working multiple people's schedules...doing notes for people who aren't my preceptor? Staying late to finish their notes while they go home early? These are to be expected hrs on inpatient. But this is not inpatient. This is not a schedule any single one of them follows in outpatient either. It's when you consider their combined schedules...which I am working...
again, back to the point here-yes clinical learning is good-but not at the total expense of book studying-you need both to make a successful rotation. If book studying was so unimportant, schools would make all rotations be full time double shift etc with no shelf exams. And, reading also helps you learn info that helps formulate a/p's in the future.
You say you spend a lot of time correcting stuff they write, but I see my notes after preceptors attest them and such is not the case 90% of the time. They just attest my notes and it's a done deal that 90% of the time. and even the other 10%-super minor stuff.
They get to go home early and relax while I stay later doing their notes for them.
But moreover- if I've already done a large given amount of notes in a day-the question is, now does doing 10 more notes all on similar conditions present value? Perhaps. Do those extra notes present more value than spending the time going home and reading up on the same conditions and expanding my knowledge, to complement what I saw clinically? From my own experience-the reading presents a higher educational value at that point.
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Med students involve scut work. That is the bottom line. I would never make my students do Scut but that is just me. When I take on a student, it slows me down more than it helps me. The small stipend is never worth it.
Life is a give and take. Your preceptor took on students which is a burden. Although I may not agree, she has the right to make you do scut work.
Thats the bottom line. Crap rolls down hill and you are at the bottom of the hill.
Life always balances out. There will be rotations that you feel unfairly overworked. There will be rotations where the preceptor makes your month a piece of cake.
I hope you come back and start a thread on how easy your month was and had more than expected time to study. I bet you if you did this, you will have many positive threads.
Truthfully, if this bothers you that much then you get bothered too easily.
Life is a give and take. Your preceptor took on students which is a burden. Although I may not agree, she has the right to make you do scut work.
Thats the bottom line. Crap rolls down hill and you are at the bottom of the hill.
Life always balances out. There will be rotations that you feel unfairly overworked. There will be rotations where the preceptor makes your month a piece of cake.
I hope you come back and start a thread on how easy your month was and had more than expected time to study. I bet you if you did this, you will have many positive threads.
Truthfully, if this bothers you that much then you get bothered too easily.
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I am not saying I doubt you or this can't be true. But I smell Troll.
Thats my opinion, don't freak out.
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I thought the situation was resolved?
I'm the one going through it. And I'm saying it's true. But I don't want to sit here and argue. I will say though I don't think what's happening is right.
The research situation yes.
The hours...well, just counting down til shelf on Friday and being done w/ this rotation.
Sorry, got lost in posts and may have mixed up who recommended it.
Thanks libertynne
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OP is writing notes on patients they're seeing. This isn't scutwork or the work of a scribe, this is the work of a doctor, and dare I say med student. Its sad to see med students that aren't used to writing notes in 4th year. Now I know why if writing patient notes is viewed as "scutwork" by the majority of students.
If they were just sitting in the background shadowing and then writing the notes, that would be one thing, but they're really getting a ton of patient encounter experiences as well as getting used to the documentation side.
This honestly sounds like an incredible med student experience at a crappy time for OP. They're worried about the shelf because they didn't have time on inpatient to study enough, they expected more now, and its just as hard.
OP, communication is important. You may not feel that way, but you gotta communicate with your attending and explain the situation. You can ask for shorter hours without looking like you're trying to avoid work. Honestly, we almost always give students shorter hours or even the day off before the shelf, but that's just the culture here. Some people are just so removed from med school that they don't remember that being an issue.
Update-
I talked to her about the "case report." She isn't sure if she's publishing it. But upon me asking earnestly, agreed, if it does get published I too get credit
That said, she asked me a ton this afternoon about my readings into it-was one of those "out there" cases-and to paraphrase, to have answered her properly would have needed hours of research, not the kind of thing you can do on the side one evening when shelf is coming up. I professionally told her it's very interesting, I wish I could look into it more-but am stressed for shelf and will look into it during the early days of my January rotation. Seemed she appreciated my enthu for following up during a new rotation. Was she upset I didn't do it all this week? Maybe. or maybe not. Who knows. But I also know it is impossible to do everything at once.
Thanks everyone for your guidance. And Happy Holidays
It seriously sounds like she really cares about your education. You probably just needed to be a bit more upfront with her about how you were feeling/what your worries were all along. Take this as a lesson, sure as a med student you really feel the need to say yes and generally speaking you should avoid saying no to opportunities to learn, but its also OK to be honest about what you're struggling with.
Like I said before: I agree, great experience. But not at the total expense of studying. Studying helps you understand concepts, formulate better A/P's. Working multiple docs' shifts while they go home and relax....really? If studying was so unimportant, schools would not track it with a shelf. They'd have us all working 15 hour days.
You are right, perhaps it's better to be a bit more upfront professionally but politely
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You're welcome to vent, I mean I do too on here. But don't ya think all the time you've spent on here complaining could have been spent on Uworld or something? It's one thing to complain about (possibly) too much work, but then to spend time on here instead of making up for it seems a bit disingenuous. I've had very similar hours and workload on many of my rotations. There are aspects of what you're saying that are excessive for sure, but there also seems to be a bit of misunderstanding on your part (case in point the lit review case report thing). Most of your workload is spot on to what many of us are doing. Welcome to the world bud
I know how much time I've spent on here. It's often when I'm so burned out I need a 1-2 min off the books-but can't afford a longer break (to sleep etc). I'm an adult. I know how to handle my time, thank you very much.
"Most of your workload is spot on to what many of us are doing."-No, no one I know works double shifts in outpatient.
I feel there are people here who justify this to show off. It really feels, like someone pointed out earlier, like this is a contest about "I did more, so what." There is reasonable and then there is unreasonable. If you want to act condescending-I really don't care to hear it. I welcome opinions, but when worded condescendingly, dismissively...no.
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Alright. Just letting you know what my interpretation is based on what I've read. As I've said, there are excessive parts of your workload but it isn't extremely different. Sorry to so deeply offend you
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For everyone saying these things tend to even out - they don’t, not really. Some people are just lucky, like my classmate who has never had to take 24 hour call due to their preceptors and sites. That’s unfortunately something you are just going to swallow and ignore, there is no way everything will be fair in clinicals. However, I will say that it sounds like in the future it may be a good idea to have a “setting expectations” meeting with your preceptor so that everyone is on the same page before you start. If you had had that conversation with her at the beginning it would have given you an opportunity to say “Clinically I would like to work on these things ______, would you be able to review at least one of my notes with me per day/week? I take the shelf on the x date. In terms of studying for the shelf I am working on these topics (x,y,z) and I am hoping to be able to get some exposure to them in clinic so I can read further on them. If you have any y cases come in I would love an opportunity to see them to solidify my knowledge of that. I am hoping to achieve an honors grade and I would like to know what your expectations are so I can aim for that.” And if she were to lay out the expectations (your current schedule/arrangement) you would have had the opportunity to voice concerns and discuss maybe a lighter workload the week of the shelf or not working for preceptors that will not be grading you. It also gives you some ground to stand on later if reality is not what was discussed/agreed upon in the initial meeting. I have found most attendings to be reasonable but you definitely have to communicate.
Take your condescension elsewhere. If you need to inflate your self esteem by putting others down...not even going to comment anymore on that LOL
This is golden advice. Thank you. Will try it in future rotations
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This went exactly as I think we've all come to expect.
A few quick thoughts:
OP, if you're working a full 8-ish hour day with your attending generally speaking I would agree that your day should end when hers does. That being said, this really does sound like a pretty good rotation in terms of learning and experience. One of the things we see residents (and even many new attendings) struggle with early on is not getting too bogged down with a busy clinic schedule. You'll have a pretty good leg-up on most after this rotation. There's also no book substitute for actually seeing patients.
While the 10-12 hour days can be draining, you do have weekends off it seems like so you're a decent bit under the 80 hour max that residents hit pretty routinely and they too have to read and study pretty much every day. It also gives you 2 full days to catch up on reading.
Tl;dr - I don't work students this hard but its a much more valuable experience than what many of your classmates are likely getting during their outpatient months.
A few quick thoughts:
OP, if you're working a full 8-ish hour day with your attending generally speaking I would agree that your day should end when hers does. That being said, this really does sound like a pretty good rotation in terms of learning and experience. One of the things we see residents (and even many new attendings) struggle with early on is not getting too bogged down with a busy clinic schedule. You'll have a pretty good leg-up on most after this rotation. There's also no book substitute for actually seeing patients.
While the 10-12 hour days can be draining, you do have weekends off it seems like so you're a decent bit under the 80 hour max that residents hit pretty routinely and they too have to read and study pretty much every day. It also gives you 2 full days to catch up on reading.
Tl;dr - I don't work students this hard but its a much more valuable experience than what many of your classmates are likely getting during their outpatient months.
No book substitute for seeing patients, I agree. But that doesn't mean book studying should be neglected. And actually, weekends alone aren't enough time to read the amount needed to understand what I see in clinic, make good A/Ps etc. You are talking here about residents-they've gone through med school-mastered the info. Depriving a student the chance to master info at the M3 level is not good. Certain things (example: memorizing treatment algorithms) while complemented by clinical learning, are not fully done unless books are involved. And weekends are not enough time for that.
I appreciate the tone of your response-expressing it, without condescension or being rude.
I do think some of the other responses on here are rudely toned and more of a contest of "I did more, hahaha" and general "put-down" statements and it's unfortunate people feel the need to boost their egos by being condescending, but whatever.
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I honestly could care less about you. My self esteem has absolutely zero to do with random strangers on the internet. I’m simply stating what my interpretation was (and obviously I’m not the only one). Try not to be so sensitive. Best of luck in the future
Pretty sure if the tone of some of the messages on here was used in patient or colleague communications, it'd be deemed unprofessional. I've seen it happen.
But whatever. Not here to argue.
Best of luck to you too
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It's a month long rotation, minus weekends -- so like 20-22 days. Your definition of "chronic" is a far-cry than almost everybody else's.
My advice is to put your head down, do the best you can, and let someone else fall on that sword if they want to.
My advice is to put your head down, do the best you can, and let someone else fall on that sword if they want to.
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First, no one "masters the info" in 3rd year. They meet the expectations of a 3rd year student. Big difference. If 2 days a week with no clinical work aren't enough I have several questions. I can give you an article right now that covers everything you need to know about treating hypertension that shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes to read/digest. Let's say twice that for diabetes since its a touch more complicated. That's 40% of my my PCP day in under 3 hours.
Second, weekends are absolutely enough. Plenty of people do 8 weeks of surgery 5am - 7-8pm and still manage to find enough time to read. Heck, on my OB rotation we worked 6p-8a for 2 weeks with just weekends off. Everyone did fine. It sucked, no two ways about it, but it was also a short span of time.
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That is a high quality meme
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OP,
At least the rotation will be over. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise but what your attending is doing is terrible with respect to having you scribe and whoring you out to other attendings. I didn't write too many notes in med school but I was still able to see plenty of patients & churn out notes efficiently during intern year.
At least the rotation will be over. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise but what your attending is doing is terrible with respect to having you scribe and whoring you out to other attendings. I didn't write too many notes in med school but I was still able to see plenty of patients & churn out notes efficiently during intern year.
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Seems like OP has more issues than just not enough time to read. Seems like plenty of time.
Come home at 8pm. Quick Exercise/dinner for 1 hr, shower. 10pm, read for an hr.
I don't think as an M3, a weekend wasn't enough.
Come home at 8pm. Quick Exercise/dinner for 1 hr, shower. 10pm, read for an hr.
I don't think as an M3, a weekend wasn't enough.
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This thread encapsulates the medical profession.
Colleague 1: I feel overworked.
Colleagues 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, HR, admin and CEO: Weak sauce. Nah, you suck. It's good for you. Work harder.
Colleague 1: I feel overworked.
Colleagues 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, HR, admin and CEO: Weak sauce. Nah, you suck. It's good for you. Work harder.
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OP's problem literally has a timeframe of a few weeks -- not years or even months. What advice other than suggesting OP adjust their viewpoint would you consider good advice? File some sort of grievance that may backfire? Quit medical school?
My yoga instructor has an amazing quality of life. Maybe OP can consider that career instead if a 20-days of hardship is too much to bear?
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You don’t need to file a grievance. Just tell the director, “Hey, I’m working for doctors other than my preceptor for 12-14 hours per day, is this what you expect?” The school can either say “Yeah everyone does this totally normal,” or “No, we need to make changes.” Doctors are so damn scared of the administration no wonder they’re getting boned so hard.
What do you think is better, having the OP not study -> get burned out plus a bad grade on the shelf -> explain why he/she did badly AFTER THE FACT? No-one’s going to believe him/her, and I know sure as hell SDN won’t have any sympathy.
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One lesson that you will all learn with time is that things can always get worse.
For a med student, that is chronic. I would wake up feeling nauseated from stress + lack of sleep and not being able to study. But yeah, I just survived it, it's over, so will let someone else "fall on the sword" if they want to
I know students who studied all evening every weekday + weekends, came close to failing.
If really, the model of working all day/all night with just weekends to study is enough, all schools would do it.
And yes-HTN and diabetes-however, shelf tests WAY MORE than that even though you are right that it is most of what we see
If really, the model of working all day/all night with just weekends to study is enough, all schools would do it.
And yes-HTN and diabetes-however, shelf tests WAY MORE than that even though you are right that it is most of what we see
Thanks a ton. Just survived it. I feel the same way.
Wish more people were like you instead of making it a contest of "I did more, so what"
Like I said-my classmates came close to failing even despite having evenings + weekends.
If the model you are saying is indeed enough all schools would make us work double shifts the full clerkship-clearly they don't.
I know what "issues" I have or don't have-thanks very much
In those few weeks, I woke up stressed and nauseated. Lost a ton of weight due to the stress of not being able to study enough. Your second comment is very condescending and to be honest I'm shocked you as a doctor who *should* be empathetic can be so dismissive-I think you're just trying to show off...whatever. Life's too short to deal with comments like this.
That is a good way of doing it. Perhaps if this happens again, depending on said situation, I will. This is a diplomatic way to handle it.
Your thoughts echo my sentiments
Never denied that. But doesn't mean it makes my situation better
Update: The rotation is over. Don't have my shelf score yet. Pulled many semi-all nighters the week of, fingers crossed it went well.
To those-with either opinion-who helped me, or even who were just polite while expressing opinions, thank you.
To those who decided to be condescending and rude, I sincerely hope this attitude doesn't carry over when you are with your patients.
Happy Holidays everyone!
To those-with either opinion-who helped me, or even who were just polite while expressing opinions, thank you.
To those who decided to be condescending and rude, I sincerely hope this attitude doesn't carry over when you are with your patients.
Happy Holidays everyone!
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If you want to project condescension, you can. My yoga instructor is great and probably does more for more people than I ever could as a doctor. Her quality of life is amazing, too.
I am serious -- if 20 days of a difficult rotation is enough to break you, then consider a career pivot. Things will be worse as an intern, worse as a resident, and worse as an attending. Contrary to what people say, medicine doesn't get easier as you go along.
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