This person is dumb as hell, but they still get to grade me. (yay)

[Guillemot]

So I feel that clinical grades are quite often a load of bull****. It has occurred on several occasions that I will get an eval less than I feel I deserve from people that I consider to be stupid.

I find it especially asinine when Ill get a comment like "average knowledge."

1. You are dumb. It is not your place to assess my knowledge.
2. Your opinion is in contradiction to the NBME. I usually score way above average on the shelf exams.
3. Ass kissing is not knowledge
4. Go **** yourself

---

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[SLUser11]

So I feel that clinical grades are quite often a load of bull****. It has occurred on several occasions that I will get an eval less than I feel I deserve from people that I consider to be stupid.

I find it especially asinine when Ill get a comment like "average knowledge."

1. You are dumb. It is not your place to assess my knowledge.
2. Your opinion is in contradiction to the NBME. I usually score way above average on the shelf exams.
3. Ass kissing is not knowledge
4. Go **** yourself

How dare they call you average!!?! They must be dumb if they can't recognize your genius.

What irks me the most about this situation is that the evaluator's opinion is in contradiction to the NBME.....

 

[clifftacopter]

Medicine is not about how well you can take a multiple choice test.

Your clinical rotations are the first point in your medical career where you're really being trained to be a doctor, and evaluations (in my opinion) are a really important aspect of that. Yes, it sucks that you can sometimes be screwed by people with malignant personalities, but that's just how real life works. From now until you retire you're going to be evaluated by somebody: your residents and your attendings now, later your patients and the staff you work with (although you won't be getting a grade and a transcript for the latter).

Also consider: perhaps your knowledge is just average. That's not bad. You're still doing better than 50% of a group of already smart people. But really, your ability to answer pimp questions is not even close to the most important thing you should be taking away from these rotations, anyway.

 

[red10]

If you can't take criticism and use it to improve....you're gonna have a bad time.
If your ego is bigger than it deserves to be...you're gonna have a bad time.

Maybe you're not showing all this knowledge you have and should work with the person to see what you can do to improve and make sure even the peasants recognize your genius. If you actually think its unfair go talk to the clerkship director.

 

[FSU2013]

Yea, it sucks. It is what it is.

But maybe more importantly, your patients, techs, nurses, administrators and even colleges won't all be einsteins. You have to learn to deal with it and excel in the system you work in.

 

[KnuxNole]

is this an attending....or resident?

If it's an attending, I think they have YEARS of experience to properly assess knowledge.

Same goes for a resident. Resident evals dont weigh as much compared to attending evals though. It depends on the clerkship. I feel people are getting the hint that residents like to pick one choice, choose that for every category, with no comments at all. Then again, an attending can do this too :

So yeah...as long as there are no negative comments like "Student is late" or "Student can't write a SOAP note/come up with a DDx at all" or "I would not recommend him for any residency", it's not something to fret too much about. Get in and get out.

 

[b-real]

OP, you sound like a d-bag. Also, NBME (or any other MC test) scores != clinical ability. There are plenty of people who destroy MC tests but can't diagnose their way out of a paper bag. Additionally, evals also take into account your ability to work with others. You may have said or done something that rubbed someone the wrong way. Judging from your post, that's not unlikely.

 

[MilkmanAl]

How dare they call you average!!?! They must be dumb if they can't recognize your genius.

What irks me the most about this situation is that the evaluator's opinion is in contradiction to the NBME.....

OP, you sound like a d-bag. Also, NBME (or any other MC test) scores != clinical ability. There are plenty of people who destroy MC tests but can't diagnose their way out of a paper bag. Additionally, evals also take into account your ability to work with others. You may have said or done something that rubbed someone the wrong way. Judging from your post, that's not unlikely.

Salvation lies within.

 

[mmmcdowe]

How dare they call you average!!?! They must be dumb if they can't recognize your genius.

What irks me the most about this situation is that the evaluator's opinion is in contradiction to the NBME.....

Sounds to me that another special butterfly just found its way into the bug zapper.

 

[Guillemot]

These are more like responses I'd expect if I had posted this on the DO forum. Interesting.

 

[Alvarez13]

If you can't take criticism and use it to improve....you're gonna have a bad time.
If your ego is bigger than it deserves to be...you're gonna have a bad time.

Maybe you're not showing all this knowledge you have and should work with the person to see what you can do to improve and make sure even the peasants recognize your genius. If you actually think its unfair go talk to the clerkship director.

He french-fried when he should've pizzaed.

 

[KnuxNole]

Also, why do you think that they are dumb?
Plus, they might not "know a lot" but neither do 3rd year med students haha

Remember that interns get yelled at a lot by attending, but I'm sure if we as med students become interns, we will get our fair share of scolding. Attending seem really benign towards students from my experience, since they know that we are learners while the residents are doctors, who are training on the job. For ex, if a student messes up a presentation, they don't seem as annoyed compared to an intern messing up a presentation. Instead they would politely say stuff like "It's always a good idea to mention XXX when you talk about PE" or "It's good to know what the Tmax is as well". As opposed to "Why didn't you mention XXX, did you EVEN check? Stop being so negligible and pathetic!" or "You didn't order this test...WHY?!"

 

[MrBeauregard]

These are more like responses I'd expect if I had posted this on the DO forum. Interesting.

What does that mean?

 

[Rendar5]

What does that mean?

Perhaps he means that DO's call it like it is?
That's mean, Just because I'm an MD doesn't mean I don't know a douchebag attitude when I see one. If all you got was an "average knowledge" count yourself lucky. A kindergarten teacher might give worse evals "doesn't know how to share, doesn't play well with others, thinks he's better than everyone else. gets picked on and beaten up a lot by even the non-bullies"

 

[Guillemot]

Guess Ill just take my good test scores to my prestigious residency where I wont get assaulted by the special ed kids.

 

[b-real]

Guess Ill just take my good test scores to my prestigious residency where I wont get assaulted by the special ed kids.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

 

[bigkahunaburger]

Hopefully they can appreciate how much you whine at your "prestigious residency", honestly though I feel smarter just reading your posts. My only question is, does your neck hurt at the end of the day from carrying that massive amount of knowledge in your head?

 

[Perrotfish]

is this an attending....or resident?

If it's an attending, I think they have YEARS of experience to properly assess knowledge.

They can have as many years as you like, the problem is they don't have nearly enough experience with you to give a decent eval. A month is pushing the limits of what you need to assess someone's ability, and in 3rd year you're very lucky if you even get that. So the evals are pretty random.

Also, let's be honest, some residencies are better than others and some residents (and attendings) are smarter than others. My school did most of our rotations at our home hospital: average to smart residents and brilliant attendings. However we did a handful of rotations at a large, profit driven hospital with detached attending of average intelligence and the dumbest residents I have ever met in my life. All the chiefs when I was there were from the Caribbean. I saw patients discharged with unexplained acute vision loss, I saw medicine consulted on hypotensive trauma victims that didn't have an IV placed, I saw surgeons puncturing organs when placing trochars. Honestly how could residents like that tell the difference between a great and an average student? It's like asking a fifth grader to tell the difference between a good and great quantum physicist.

 

[KnuxNole]

Don't the attendings oversee some of this stuff Like the discharged patient with acute vision loss...?
The puncturing might be hard to oversee even if the attending was 2 feet away to grab the hand or yell STOP.

And you do make a good point in the beginning. I guess I read the OPs idea as an arrogant guy who thinks the grader are dumb without any reason/proof to justify it. I do agree that it's hard to judge in 1 month time, but that's just the name of 3rd year I guess :/ Annoying, but gotta work with the game. Hopefully, PDs for residencies know that evals are sometimes filled out by people who might not see you often and misjudge, or apathetic people who give everyone a "pass" or "honors".

 

[Perrotfish]

Don't the attendings oversee some of this stuff Like the discharged patient with acute vision loss...?
The puncturing might be hard to oversee even if the attending was 2 feet away to grab the hand or yell STOP.
.

The deadly combination is a bad resident and an attending who doesn't really know how to supervise in an academic setting. Unfortunately, the reason this program got such crappy residents was because they were basically a for profit institution whose attending didn't know how to teach, which sent everyone with a decent application somewhere else. So because they couldn't provide any real supervision the only residents they could attract were the ones who desperately needed supervision.

 

[MrBeauregard]

However we did a handful of rotations at a large, profit driven hospital with detached attending of average intelligence and the dumbest residents I have ever met in my life. All the chiefs when I was there were from the Caribbean. I saw patients discharged with unexplained acute vision loss, I saw medicine consulted on hypotensive trauma victims that didn't have an IV placed, I saw surgeons puncturing organs when placing trochars. Honestly how could residents like that tell the difference between a great and an average student? It's like asking a fifth grader to tell the difference between a good and great quantum physicist.

That sounds like the scariest experience ever.

 

[Rendar5]

The deadly combination is a bad resident and an attending who doesn't really know how to supervise in an academic setting. Unfortunately, the reason this program got such crappy residents was because they were basically a for profit institution whose attending didn't know how to teach, which sent everyone with a decent application somewhere else. So because they couldn't provide any real supervision the only residents they could attract were the ones who desperately needed supervision.

Yikes, scary to realize that such places exist. However, nothing about the OP's post explains this to be the case at his institute. Even if it were, his post just drips with unnecessary attitude..

 

[Deferoxamine]

So I feel that clinical grades are quite often a load of bull****. It has occurred on several occasions that I will get an eval less than I feel I deserve from people that I consider to be stupid.

I find it especially asinine when Ill get a comment like "average knowledge."

1. You are dumb. It is not your place to assess my knowledge.
2. Your opinion is in contradiction to the NBME. I usually score way above average on the shelf exams.
3. Ass kissing is not knowledge
4. Go **** yourself

If you ever become one of my students on the floor, you get an automatic F. Just so you know, residents can smell an attitude like yours from a mile away - and yes, we do talk to eachother, and yes, we know via word-of-mouth who the real rockstar students are.

What a shame you consider your residents to be stupid. You'll see how much time you have to read and memorize the intracacies of First Aid and Goljan when you're an intern... and you'll see how many of those details from 2nd year Pathophysiology lecture you can actual remember in a split second when you're watching over 30 patients and 4 of them aren't doing well. When your med students are like you and roll their eyes at you when you can't remember the mechanism of action of aztreonam when put on the spot, let's see how that makes you feel.

Though with a sunny disposition like yours, it really is difficult to see why you might not be getting the highest grades...

 

[Twaves]

Yeah, but don't prestigious residencies prefer arrogant people with a sense of entitlement?

 

[Perrotfish]

Nvm

 

[235009]

So I feel that clinical grades are quite often a load of bull****. It has occurred on several occasions that I will get an eval less than I feel I deserve from people that I consider to be stupid.

I find it especially asinine when Ill get a comment like "average knowledge."

1. You are dumb. It is not your place to assess my knowledge.
2. Your opinion is in contradiction to the NBME. I usually score way above average on the shelf exams.
3. Ass kissing is not knowledge
4. Go **** yourself

"knowledge" is only one component and is not the main one being tested on the floor. residents and attendings know there's a test at the end that will test your knowledge but the way you get good marks from anyone is by being personable, enthusiastic, taking on responsibility and showing you can handle it, being organized, communicating well, being a good team player, and having a positive attitude. if people dont want to be around you it doesn't matter how much you think you know.

 

[Top Gun]

So I feel that clinical grades are quite often a load of bull****. It has occurred on several occasions that I will get an eval less than I feel I deserve from people that I consider to be stupid.

I find it especially asinine when Ill get a comment like "average knowledge."

1. You are dumb. It is not your place to assess my knowledge.
2. Your opinion is in contradiction to the NBME. I usually score way above average on the shelf exams.
3. Ass kissing is not knowledge
4. Go **** yourself

Well excuse your residents for not kowtowing to you in recognition of your superior intellect.

Here's a little clue for you. As a med student, you know jack $*it about patient care. You might have the theoretical knowledge, but you lack the practical experience. I can guarantee that your fellow residents, who are the ones really managing the patients, have clinical skills and knowledge that are far superior to yours. You've never even managed a patient on your own, yet, so how can you say that you are far more intelligent than any of them? The eval you got is probably at least partly reflective of your attitude. Eat a slice of humble pie and realize that you have much to learn.

 

[kjamess]

Guess Ill just take my good test scores to my prestigious residency where I wont get assaulted by the special ed kids.

Im pretty sure you need consistently strong grades/evals to secure a spot at a good program. And why exactly are these residents "stupid"? No, forgetting some obscure theoretical info that they havent seen in years doesnt count.

I hope you arent one of those clowns who treats every interaction with others as a referendum on their intelligence.

 

[cobalt243]

ms3 >>>>> residents? dumb asses at hopkins should give him a prestigious residency already

 

[Substance]

The OP could have a lesson in tact, but he's got a point regarding the random evaluation systems that we have in our clinical years.

It really all comes down to how much the evaluator likes you on a personal level. Bonus points if you are a hot female or of the same religious background as the evaluator.

Med school is a load of crap.

 

[JackShephard MD]

The OP could have a lesson in tact, but he's got a point regarding the random evaluation systems that we have in our clinical years.

It really all comes down to how much the evaluator likes you on a personal level. Bonus points if you are a hot female or of the same religious background as the evaluator.

Med school is a load of crap.

lol, probably true.

 

[Acherona]

you may be average compared with the other med students seen by that attending. the nbme ranks you against every med student in the country taking the test which is a different population.

I agree though that it's silly to ask attendings/residents to evaluate your medical knowledge. there is not enough time to get an objective assessment. in the end this grade is going to be based on a couple pimp questions and the overall impression of the student. it sux but that's the way it is. not being a d-bag will help immensely.

 

[C O M 2014]

So I feel that clinical grades are quite often a load of bull****. It has occurred on several occasions that I will get an eval less than I feel I deserve from people that I consider to be stupid.

I find it especially asinine when Ill get a comment like "average knowledge."

1. You are dumb. It is not your place to assess my knowledge.
2. Your opinion is in contradiction to the NBME. I usually score way above average on the shelf exams.
3. Ass kissing is not knowledge
4. Go **** yourself

It's hard to disagree with this. I've seen it firsthand. Cute, dumb girl talks and flirts a lot with preceptor, gets amazing eval, epically fails shelf exam and is pulled out of rotations for failing step 1. Quiet guy who doesn't kiss a lot of ass but is above average, rocks boards, 90%+ on shelf exam, yet gets lesser eval. Clinical evals are subjective and based more on how much your preceptor likes you than on your actual ability. And of course not all doctors are geniuses. How could anyone argue otherwise? It's just unfortunate these evals count for so much.

 

[NontradICUdoc]

 

[Lolscan]

So I feel that clinical grades are quite often a load of bull****. It has occurred on several occasions that I will get an eval less than I feel I deserve from people that I consider to be stupid.

I find it especially asinine when Ill get a comment like "average knowledge."

1. You are dumb. It is not your place to assess my knowledge.
2. Your opinion is in contradiction to the NBME. I usually score way above average on the shelf exams.
3. Ass kissing is not knowledge
4. Go **** yourself

Don't let the other people convince you otherwise. NBME is the ONLY objective assessment of a person's knowledge. Clearly a quiet intelligent person will never get honors but a ******* blonde that flirts will always honor. I have seen this over and over and it is absolutely ******ed.

Also as for people posting about "learning from your criticism". This is true ONLY to a certain extent. However, every attending has different expectations and opinions. I mean just try presenting a case to different attendings. Each one of them interrupt you because they have different expectations of what a "proper" presentation should have. So take their feedback with a grain of salt and a good 50% of what you will hear is complete utter bull****. However, seeing the same trend of suggestions should raise a red flag...

 

[primadonna22274]

Anyone else frustrated with an 88.5 because "you're awesome but one needs to leave room to show improvement"? I hate that I even care about the stupid grade, but when the preceptor eval is the solitary basis for a grade in a 10-credit rotation wish it was P/F.

 

[45408]

Don't let the other people convince you otherwise. NBME is the ONLY objective assessment of a person's knowledge. Clearly a quiet intelligent person will never get honors but a ******* blonde that flirts will always honor. I have seen this over and over and it is absolutely ******ed.

Also as for people posting about "learning from your criticism". This is true ONLY to a certain extent. However, every attending has different expectations and opinions. I mean just try presenting a case to different attendings. Each one of them interrupt you because they have different expectations of what a "proper" presentation should have. So take their feedback with a grain of salt and a good 50% of what you will hear is complete utter bull****. However, seeing the same trend of suggestions should raise a red flag...

Always, huh?

 

[SLUser11]

It's hard to disagree with this. I've seen it firsthand. Cute, dumb girl talks and flirts a lot with preceptor, gets amazing eval, epically fails shelf exam and is pulled out of rotations for failing step 1. Quiet guy who doesn't kiss a lot of ass but is above average, rocks boards, 90%+ on shelf exam, yet gets lesser eval. Clinical evals are subjective and based more on how much your preceptor likes you than on your actual ability. And of course not all doctors are geniuses. How could anyone argue otherwise? It's just unfortunate these evals count for so much.

There's a reason why the clerkship grade is not based on a single test or evaluation. Some students are motivated, outgoing, and hard-working with a lot of clinical skills, but won't do well on the shelf. They should still be rewarded for their hard work. On the other hand, some students are disinterested, do only the bare minimum, struggle clinically, but score well on the shelf.....regardless of their "genius," they deserve a lower grade based on their clinical performance. So, the final grade is based on a balance of several factors. Those dumb@$$ blondes who fail the shelf aren't honoring, either, because their performances were not balanced.

In order to be an honor medical student, you have to do more than memorize facts. You have to show that you are well-balanced. There's much more to being a good doctor than test scores.

I agree that clinical evaluations are subjective. However, I've rarely seen a great student get a bad eval. Usually, the unfairness and subjectivity arises in mediocre students where the pendulum could swing either way. Also, you are evaluated by several people, so one attending or resident who sucks can't really sink your grade that much...but if you get a bad grade, you can still blame that one person to protect your snowflake integrity.

Now, you can pout as much as you want, but there's nothing about that system that is unreasonable.

 

[C O M 2014]

There's a reason why the clerkship grade is not based on a single test or evaluation. Some students are motivated, outgoing, and hard-working with a lot of clinical skills, but won't do well on the shelf. They should still be rewarded for their hard work. On the other hand, some students are disinterested, do only the bare minimum, struggle clinically, but score well on the shelf.....regardless of their "genius," they deserve a lower grade based on their clinical performance. So, the final grade is based on a balance of several factors. Those dumb@$$ blondes who fail the shelf aren't honoring, either, because their performances were not balanced.

In order to be an honor medical student, you have to do more than memorize facts. You have to show that you are well-balanced. There's much more to being a good doctor than test scores.

I agree that clinical evaluations are subjective. However, I've rarely seen a great student get a bad eval. Usually, the unfairness and subjectivity arises in mediocre students where the pendulum could swing either way. Also, you are evaluated by several people, so one attending or resident who sucks can't really sink your grade that much...but if you get a bad grade, you can still blame that one person to protect your snowflake integrity.

Now, you can pout as much as you want, but there's nothing about that system that is unreasonable.

I don't know how it is at other schools, but the shelf exam only counts for 20 or 25% of the grade at mine. So someone could totally bomb the shelf and still honor. That's a bit ridiculous imo. Your grade also depends a lot on where you rotate at. I got a much higher grade on my last rotation than some of my friends, and it's only because they are at a tougher hospital with more hard ass attendings. So at the end of the year, I will have lots of honors, and they will probably have lots of high passes. They might actually be much better than me, but residency programs probably won't see it like that.

 

[primadonna22274]

I am almost positive that the eval is the sole basis for grade in those rotations we don't take a shelf exam. The one I just finished yesterday is such a rotation, so a well-meaning eval with mostly 9s, one 10 and two 8s "so I have room to grow" is a gosh darn 88.5.
He did give very nice comments and instructive criticism which I take to heart.
I hate caring about dumb grades.
Harrumph.

 

[VisionaryTics]

I am almost positive that the eval is the sole basis for grade in those rotations we don't take a shelf exam. The one I just finished yesterday is such a rotation, so a well-meaning eval with mostly 9s, one 10 and two 8s "so I have room to grow" is a gosh darn 88.5.
He did give very nice comments and instructive criticism which I take to heart.
I hate caring about dumb grades.
Harrumph.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN99jshaQbY[/YOUTUBE]

 

[primadonna22274]

Cute I deserved that.

 

[badasshairday]

I am almost positive that the eval is the sole basis for grade in those rotations we don't take a shelf exam. The one I just finished yesterday is such a rotation, so a well-meaning eval with mostly 9s, one 10 and two 8s "so I have room to grow" is a gosh darn 88.5.
He did give very nice comments and instructive criticism which I take to heart.
I hate caring about dumb grades.
Harrumph.

whoa. An 88.5 is a damn good score... I hope my student was happy, she did a good job, but I def did not give her all 10's. Gave her mostly 9's, it was her first rotation. Score of 95 total. She is probably crying.

 

[staceelg]

Well said

 

[Lolscan]

There's a reason why the clerkship grade is not based on a single test or evaluation. Some students are motivated, outgoing, and hard-working with a lot of clinical skills, but won't do well on the shelf. They should still be rewarded for their hard work. On the other hand, some students are disinterested, do only the bare minimum, struggle clinically, but score well on the shelf.....regardless of their "genius," they deserve a lower grade based on their clinical performance. So, the final grade is based on a balance of several factors. Those dumb@$$ blondes who fail the shelf aren't honoring, either, because their performances were not balanced.

In order to be an honor medical student, you have to do more than memorize facts. You have to show that you are well-balanced. There's much more to being a good doctor than test scores.

I agree that clinical evaluations are subjective. However, I've rarely seen a great student get a bad eval. Usually, the unfairness and subjectivity arises in mediocre students where the pendulum could swing either way. Also, you are evaluated by several people, so one attending or resident who sucks can't really sink your grade that much...but if you get a bad grade, you can still blame that one person to protect your snowflake integrity.

Now, you can pout as much as you want, but there's nothing about that system that is unreasonable.

What about the quiet kid who works hard, and is motivated? He probably won't get honors. And you are a fool to think that only "mediocre" students get unfair and subjective grades. If the attending does not like the shirt you wear, you will never get honors. I have had the clerkship director go on a 10 minute rant about about radiologists are nothing but "asocial, meek creatures, that spend their time in the dark and look at the ground when they talk to you". How do you think that attending is going to evaluate a student going into radiology? Or a student that is slightly more shy but clinically competent none the less.

And btw at my school, if you don't get clinical honors the shelf does not matter. If you do get clinical honors, the bar set on the shelf is so low, any ****** can get honors for the class.

 

[greatnt249]

How do you think that attending is going to evaluate a student going into radiology? Or a student that is slightly more shy but clinically competent none the less.

Simple solution; be more coy about what field you think you're going into until you can gauge what your attending's/resident's reaction is going to be.

It also never ceases to amaze me how butt-hurt people get over the idea of not getting honors, as if getting a high-pass or pass is the end of the world. Ideally, only ~10% of your ENTIRE CLASS should be getting honors on any given rotation, maybe ~20% will get high-pass, and the rest pass.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a meritocratic society, much as we were spoon-fed to believe growing up. That doesn't mean kiss butt all the time (or even ever), but it does mean that you need to realize that more complex dynamics are at play when it comes to your evals/grade.

 

[SLUser11]

What about the quiet kid who works hard, and is motivated?

Hard-working "quiet kids" often receive excellent evaluations. Look at the students getting AOA at your school...it's not all quarterbacks and homecoming queens. My AOA class had zero dumb blondes, but several quiet Asians, as you have described yourself.

Also, don't distort the wording of my post. Mediocre students receive mediocre evaluations more than excellent students. It's not "foolish" to point this out. To be honest, I have a lot more experience than you when it comes to evaluating performance as well as being evaluated, and I know how the numbers fall into place.

Medical school is hard on our egos because it's the first time that we are surrounded by intellectual equals. Most of us soared through college without having to try too hard, but we get to med school and we are surrounded by valedictorians, PhDs, etc. Now, we have to try hard to do well, and sometimes even our best effort is not enough to end up on top. For many of us, it's our first taste of defeat and disappointment.

Some people cope well with this new disappointment, but many students choose instead to project their failures onto others. I am not immune to this behavior, and I've done it myself a hundred times. However, looking back, for every 10 bad evaluations I've seen, maybe 2 or 3 are unfair, and the other 7-8 are just students with poor insight into their shortcomings.

I have almost never met a student who believed he or she actually deserved a bad evaluation. I've rarely even met a student who believed he or she deserved an average evaluation. We are all above-average snowflakes, after all.

 

[colbgw02]

Some people cope well with this new disappointment, but many students choose instead to project their failures onto others. I am not immune to this behavior, and I've done it myself a hundred times. However, looking back, for every 10 bad evaluations I've seen, maybe 2 or 3 are unfair, and the other 7-8 are just students with poor insight into their shortcomings.

Wait, so we (general "we") are whiffing on 20-30% of sub-par clinical evaluations and this is considered acceptable? Imagine how you'd feel if your boss told you that you are being rated as below average on an evaluation, but there's a 20-30% chance that he arrived at that conclusion mistakenly? I consider that abject failure.

I'm not advocating for an overhaul of clinical evaluations. It's not like we're any more likely to get better results if we make the whole grade based on the shelf exam. My issue is more with the way grades are weighted, which is typically heavily toward core clerkships. The message that such weighting conveys - whether implied or explicit - is that your performance in those rotations is the best indicator available to predict your performance as a resident.

I have a hard time with that. Considering that medicine has a huge tent and can accomodate many types of people and personalities, clerkships value a very narrow set of traits. And I find no correlation between those traits and success or happiness as a physician.

I'm honestly not sure what the answer is. I suppose, as I mentioned before, I'd like to see less emphasis placed on the clerkships and maybe more placed on some 4th-year rotations - ideally ones in a student's chosen specialty. It would also help if people wouldn't abdicate their responsibilities in evaluting students, which - frankly - we all know happens (e.g. attending gives eval. to resident to complete).

 

[greatnt249]

If I'm not mistaken, at my school, only 10% of the class will get honors and 10% will get a high pass. That means 80% of the class will get pass. I figured it was the same at most schools. I guess not.

It should be the same at most schools, but based on how many people I've seen react poorly to the fact that they did not honor a rotation, I have to come to the conclusion that either a) grade inflation is becoming more of a problem, rendering "high pass" the new "pass" and "pass" the new "fail," or b) people have a vastly overinflated sense of how they performed in a rotation. You would think more people would realize that 80% of them are bound to fall in the "pass" category and not take it so personally if/when they do.

 

[KnuxNole]

People should not make a big deal about something only 10% will ever get :/

That should be plastered into every gunner's mind as well