First of all, thank you for all of your helpful comments on that last post. There was resolution to my anxiety and I was validated when the acting interns basically flipped out when they found out what time I had gotten to the hospital and why.
It's hard to write about things like this on the internet, because clincials really are very subjective and it's difficult to gauge whether your thoughts on the situation are valid or not. As it turns out, I'm not lazy or slacking off and the team consensus is that I'm getting to the hospital even earlier than expected and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
I also know that the chain of teaching command has come up in the comments, so the way that it works at my hospital is that the MS3s report to the interns and the MS4s report to the residents. The interns are supposed to help the medical students at this hospital and they have a cap on the number of patients they can take. They are not expected to teach in the traditional sense, but if they don't know the answer to what you're asking, I'm told that they're supposed to either tell you how to find it ("Call the Pharmacy. They will know.") or go to the residents themselves. I was not incorrect in shying away from going straight to the residents myself, but will definitely do so from now on, since I'm the one who looks foolish when I don't know answers on rounds.
So anyway, I'm going to play the games necessary to keep the team dynamic flowing, but I'm taking this intern's instructions with a grain of salt. For example, yesterday my attending went over a progress note with me--basically to tell me what her style was and how to improve. So, when my intern oh so helpfully told me to rearrange my completed note this morning to match hers, I just ignored that suggestion. I mean, just the day before, the attending had chided me for my choice of problem list and terminology which I got directly from the intern's note. I'm learning that the key here is to impress the attending grading you and not the intern harassing you.
And, I got props from the attending on rounds.
I wrote a lengthier, more detailed blog about specifically what happened this morning, but ultimately, it was disparaging to the intern and it honestly doesn't matter. There are always annoying people on a team that you have to figure out how to deal with. I just didn't know how to appropriately deal with this on a rotation, but now I do.
Life skills, friends. Life skills.
4 comments:
Oh, life skills.... Third year is all about life skills and reading people's minds. I'm right there with you, girl.
What MS3 said. Yeah, I remember the first time I got completely obviously wrong advice from an intern. It was my first day. On the plus side at least I knew she was wrong and was able to keep my mouth shut.
Glad everything went better today! What everyone else said, about the team being supposed to make you look good, is true. Unfortunately much of the time on my rotations they didn't care enough to try. When they did, it was AWESOME. I hope you get a good team soon.
You are getting there waaayyyy early. On the other hand, you should do what you feel you need to do in order to do a good job. Keep up the good work!
Honestly the hardest part of third year was not the material, it was adjusting to a constantly changing group of people with different styles and expectations. it gets better!
Just started following you after joining the blog hop this week! My husband is a PGY5 Ortho resident and I'm a Neuroscience PhD student. Sorry you have run into problems with your team :( I feel like half of making it through med/grad school is just putting up with stupid people. Looking forward to reading your posts!
Post a Comment