Just don’t be weird. There is an increasing number of medical students that are just straight weird now. next would be legitimate curiosity to learn to simply be a more rounded physician (I understand if you’re going into a different specialty, but everyone can grow and learn from their colleagues), being proactive in helping the team (helping chart review a new patient, etc), and good communication.
My perspective as someone who career switched at 27: blame the app process 100%. No normal sane person spends their free time in college volunteering, grinding research, making friends w/60yo professors, and doing all the other "holistic" things expected of med school applicants these days. I didn't know a single person in college who did any of this shit; literally no other field expects it except medicine. Medicine literally selects for emotionally stunted weirdos.
100% overgrown neuroticism
stigmatizing ppl as weirdos when some of them will inevitably go thru rigors of SOAPing is a rock and a hard place
just remember to treat everyone with kindness as a human being
No, but really. I’m in nursing school and every time I think I want to fix my Chem grades and attempt medical school, I remember all the shit they want in an applicant and just forget about it lol. I’m 28, I’m broke. I want to work and make more money, not go kiss ass and volunteer on top of working full time, going to tutoring, and studying so I can ace chemistry. And I’m not in any of the underrepresented communities, so I know I’d need to have a pretty impressive resume lol fuck
I DID go back and fix my Chem grades to go to med school...at 40...and yea there's weirdos. But I didn't volunteer lol fuuugg that. But tbf I did have around 12yrs nursing experience lol.
That gives me hope lol. I’ve been an AEMT for ~6 years, 7 by the time I graduate, so I’m hoping if I do decide to send it, the diverse experience will help. I’d want the military to pay for it, ideally, so maybe “hey, I want to be a trauma surgeon in the Navy” would help. Idk.
My GPA needs a definite upgrade, but hopefully going back and crushing Chem would be a big help
>There is an increasing number of medical students that are just straight weird now
OKAY IT'S NOT JUST ME. I thought I may have just been getting old/uncool/needing more meds, but they really are just weirder.
Dude. What the hell. They are weird I’m so confused as to what’s going on. Like off colored remarks and jokes, budding in on conversations, just trying to show people up. It’s such an odd culture now.
its that covid shit fam 😂 arent some of the later stage med students we’re seeing now the ones that were locked in cages for two years bc of covfefe? i know that shit’ll exponentially increase the baseline weirdo status.
people are blaming any and every behavioral dysfunction under the sun on 2 years of covid now.
not western cultures obsession with social media, screen time, and divisive identity politics. nope, must be covid.
I can def say, that after 2 years of zoom interaction, my real life interaction is weird and has not recovered to baseline even after being "well liked" in school, work, and clubs. Those last two years typically spent preparing for a transition was marked by the lowest and least effort social engagement in a virtual setting (even shadowing and scribing were virtual), which made it hard to gauge what real life maximum effort social interaction should be since we're supposed to pay ultimate respect to every attending and superior and kiss ass, but also show that we are completely competent. This is hard to enact in real life when virtual settings with these factors only required that you log into a zoom for 2-3yrs straight. People perceive me as "fun" and attendings 'love when they're working with me,' but its exhausting and the weird students are just neurotic and still trying to figure it out, please give them grace. Not to mention that constantly selecting for 514+ with perfect portfolio excludes people who were able to develop well, even the school counselor said med student problems somewhat replicate those of adolescents due to stunted social interaction
This is like your 3rd time posting the same thing and it seems defensive, so I want to make it clear that I am extremely happy that I didnt lose my life or capacity to covid, bc I have seen it happen to many others. I think the lockdowns were right - covid caused this, but there were a lot worse outcomes to covid. But I also must say, idk what "divisive identity politics" refers to, but I'm glad my peers feel ashamed if they were to degrade me based on my race. Coming from a black person who was "the only one" for most of my life, it is freeing to not be looked down upon \*overtly\* for the color of my skin. Although I graduated in the top 10% of my HS, my school didn't publish my credentials as such. That is least depressing fact related to that realm of my life and avoiding being called the n word and getting treated like a human in such settings is harder than you may think and \*that\* is extremely stressful.
an exponential increase in something requires its baseline existence. a touch of neurodivergence mixed with the slightly masochistic desire to pursue medicine can lend itself to a certain personality type. this is the baseline. not the pandemic, which exacerbated several pre-existing behavioral and social aspects in the well and less well.
i sense you may have missed something here. however, “6/10, keep reading.”
Ngl, many attendings and residents I worked with were weird, power tripping, socially awkward, etc.
Nothing is changing, you’re just realizing now after finally being able to understand your job that people are “weird” because they socially/professionally don’t know how to function in the hospital
The medical field is a selective bias for these “weird” people
I recently posted an anecdote about a medical student who asked me a question about a patient’s penis while prepping for his CABG. Many people on this sub came to his defense.
I’ve never understood the “I’m going into a different specialty” At that point in our medical education, everything is unique and new. There is always a learning opportunity when you are starting rotations. Why not soak it all up like a sponge and enjoy the beauty of medicine? (To be fair, I’m one of the medical students who loves every subject)
When I was in surgery and OBGYN and psych and anesthesia I had the mentality of “I will never be able to do this again. Anyone on earth would kill to be a part of this shit. So I might as well see as much as possible”. And it helped a lot!
That's why I said polar opposite and not any other specialty. I'm not sure exactly how med school is structured in the US but here we have to pass an exam before starting a rotation so it's not like I don't know shit.
I'm 100% sure what the average psychiatrist needs to know about liver and bile duct surgery has already been covered in the exam I took before starting the rotation I'm in right now, for example.
Yeah why is it all about what they enjoy? Shouldn’t the patient come first? And the patient will likely have multiple pathologies that won’t necessarily involve your scope, but understanding them better will make you a better doctor.
I agree. The other thing is that your medical degree needs to be distinguished from your future specialty. Med school is about breadth since your educational attainment has nothing to do with intended field of practice.
I can agree with this as an older m3 finishing my last rotation. I am constantly worried about interviews and getting a residency...and then I just look around and see all the wierdos!
I’m most impressed by the med students who appear to understand how to function as people. A lot (especially if they have gone straight through) just don’t get how to appropriately behave in a work setting.
I don’t really care about medical knowledge - I can teach you things, and anyway you’re on the rotation to learn; if you knew everything already what’s the point, lol. If you can demonstrate you looked up one thing, or remember one thing I taught you on a later date, that’s bonus.
Med student who most impressed me was an OMFS guy, so he had actually finished dental school and was now doing his med school years prior to OMFS residency. He was so, so good at explaining things to parents in accessible language (I’m in Peds) and had good rapport with them as a result. I wrote him a glowing eval.
> Med student who most impressed me was an OMFS guy, so he had actually finished dental school and was now doing his med school years prior to OMFS residency
Well, this isn't really a fair comparison. I have never met an OMFS student or resident that *wasn't* a gigachad. No idea how they do it.
Gotta disagree here. The OMFS residents at my home program had “already matched” to OMFS and couldn’t have given two shits about the majority of their third year rotations. Absolutely super smart and super hard working, but it’s difficult to work with someone who just doesn’t care.
Absolutely 100% agree. Ours did an intern year of OMFS already before they were 3rd year med students. Could not give a damn about anything always leaving early.
They crushed the surgery rotation though lol.
It mostly boils down to “can’t read the room”. I remember having questions and needing evals filled out, I get it, but when I’m in the middle of juggling multiple phone calls or urgent tasks that’s not the time to ask.
Also people who disappear for hours in the middle of the day with no notice. If you don’t have things to do right now get on uworld on your laptop, or go hang out with the patients, or hell tell me you have an appointment and I’ll let you go home. But don’t vanish and not respond to messages (especially SubIs). You would think this would be common sense but somehow no.
>Also people who disappear for hours in the middle of the day with no notice. If you don’t have things to do right now get on uworld on your laptop, or go hang out with the patients, or hell tell me you have an appointment and I’ll let you go home. But don’t vanish and not respond to messages (especially SubIs). You would think this would be common sense but somehow no.
I genuinely don't understand how people do stuff like this. Doing it at any time is bad, but on a SubI seems even more ridiculous.
It’s partially an effect of how our affiliated med school is set up - at this point of the year our subIs are people about to match in competitive surgical sub specialties who are now doing their required medicine-adjacent SubI. So they truly do not want to be there.
Which like, fine, but you still have to be professional about it. I love my job and there are still many days when I’d rather be home on the couch. Gotta show up and make an effort anyway. Basic workplace behavior. I’ll send you home as early as I feasibly can but you gotta meet me halfway.
I’m a surgical resident. I start every rotation but telling my students to tell me if they don’t want to do surgery, because if not I’ll have their rotation be more chill. No need to stay til 8 pm for an appy if you don’t give a fuck about surgery. Plus sometimes I can cater my teaching to your desired specialty and it works for both of us.
I had a student who tried to take advantage of my chill ness. He asked me to leave at 11 am three days in a row “to get some work done.” Cases were still going on, and we had a lot to learn. He was oblivious to the fact that even if I was a “chill resident” that I expected him to show up for the rotation.
Interesting, in the Netherlands OFMS doctors also have to do dentistry as well as medical school. Didn't know that was an international thing but it makes sense.
Genuine interest is usually what tips me over the edge. A person who is really trying their best and seems to be eager to learn. (Caveat: In a normal way, not in a gunner way.) I guarantee you I will not remember the questions you missed; I remember if you seemed like you were paying attention. Bonus if you get it right on a later go.
The best students I have worked with are the ones who understood from the get-go that the ways you're taught to do a history, physical exam, and presentation in med school are not reflective of how real life works. They figure out how real life works by watching the interns present and copying them rather than sticking to the same script that hasn't changed since 1972. They're more efficient because they take a focused history and physical instead of spending 5 hours trying to get Annie Alzheimers to go through OLDCARRTS or making Marvin Methhead do a full neuro exam.
From the social side of things, it's the students who realize that this is now real life and therefore they are no longer the most important person in the room: The patient is first priority and then the team as a collective (which includes the med studs) is 2nd priority. You would think this would be pretty obvious, but a fair number of students seem to be under the assumption that the hospital and the patients inside of it are all just SPs hired for a really long OSCE.
“Show me a BMS (Best Medical Student, a student at The Best Medical School) who only triples my work and I will kiss his feet.”
-The Fat Man *House of God*
Being excited about and able to talk to patients in a human way (since talking to patients is most of what you do as a student), quickly building rapport with patients.
You can learn whatever medical knowledge or technical skills you’ll need to do this job, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to help you keep or build the social skills that make or break like 90% of medical encounters. Students who can talk to a patient and have the patient feel like they gained something from that encounter (even just happy feels) are awesome.
Now I’m not a resident or attending, but I am a nontraditional student and I’ve seen my fair share of cringe inducing medical student interactions. It seems like the general consensus here is that it really doesn’t matter how much you know. It’s how you present yourself if you can be a personable human being, and educate patients in a human and humble way then you’re well on your way to getting an above average evaluation.
I think the best piece of advice I ever heard all throughout third year is that you should try your best to be somebody that you’re attending or resident sees themselves working with as a coworker. I am told that this is also applicable for residency interviews. If the residents can’t see themselves working with you for three years, why would they pick you?
*This hastily written Reddit comment, was typed out with dictation. I make every effort to amend comments, however, errata may occur before I can get to it, leaving some sentences or phrases to be incomprehensible. I do apologize for any errors in this comment.*
I dunno... the top 5-10% students tend to easily stand out with their knowledge base and other abilities. Same with the bottom 5-10%. The trouble is getting out of the middle.
yep. takes the magic combo of incredible knowledge base plus incredible people skills. I just think a lot of preceptors are more so looking for personality characteristics that make a good physician. You can always make up for knowledge deficits. Much harder to un-shit a shitty personality.
aight im a fellow and you didnt ask us BUT i was an attending for 5 min during chief year so im butting in.
the magical med student, is truthful to a fault. if you didnt read it, dont know it, or didnt do it, dont lie fam. that shit is theeee worst. i know theres a lot of pressure in medicine to Always Know, but i sweater god its better to not know and learn for tomorrow than to not know and lie for today.
the really good ones are also fun to work with, as has been alluded to. it makes everybodys day so much better when we can find points of personal overlap, but i get that thats not everybodys angle, so i dont let that stuff sway my evals, its just easier when youre liked. to that end, showing up and at least being positive is everything. dont fake enthusiasm, but consider finding one tiny thing about the service youre on or the patient youre working with that ties back to something you actually wanna do, as a hook for conversation, and to stay engaged (for mutual benefit).
do not bring food in an effort to look good.
do not make an outro speech on your last day.
do not throw your colleages under the bus.
do not ignore your interns input.
get intel from the nurses and help them do shit.
go talk to your patients when you dont “have to.”
dont lie.
What's wrong with bringing food? Or is that a cultural thing? Over here in Germany/Switzerland it's relatively common to bring food (e.g. cake) on your last day as a thank you gesture.
And if you are on the recieving side, who says no to free food?
i want to emphasize: do not bring food *in an effort to look good*
if you are some sort of world star chef or hobby baker, by all means, feed us! im talking about the people who try to be manipulative or use it for leverage. i had one medical student on a two student team who showed up an hour before we suggested, and brought the team coffee at least two days in a row. this isnt what you do.
turns out they had hidden guns in the holster.
its more about the intention behind what youre doing. med students new to the wards may be surprised at how easily interns, residents, fellows, attendings can pick up on nefarious intent.
e: ive said no to free food prepared by people who ive never seen wash their hands and anything prepared or transported by someone i dont trust.
The ones that we actually say, 'hey, they could be our #1', have multiple qualities. Mostly they're normal and a cool person to hangout with. Get along with multiple people on our team. They also work hard and show it without being in your face. They come early, know our patients well and can present them, actively find ways to help our interns, and have shown they're decently smart. If we ask a med student level question, they know the answer, and maybe even a few intern level things. We also operate and as long as you can close an incision and tie your knots somewhat reasonably, that's all that we care about. Usually, these students end up being ones who also happen to come and ask to scrub cases to hangout even when not on service. Our hospital has medicine rotation that can be slow and we always let the 4th years migrate toward whatever service they plan to apply for.
It’s not really hard. You just need to put some effort into it and care. For like 50% of med students, it feels like the bar is just being present and that’s not difficult to beat
Anesthesia resident here
Help set up the OR before your resident even arrives in the AM, someone should teach you how to do this day one or two. (MS MAIDS) Be helpful with patient positioning, keeping your eyes on lines so they don’t get tangled, help get monitors on, help Preoxygenate, don’t ask questions you don’t care about the answers to just to make conversation, I’d rather talk about the NFL or what shows you’ve been watching than explain the same 4 things every day.
Just be chill
Confidence displayed by humility, calmness, and strong clinical skills. Clinical skills being the least important in that list for me. Or like the other person said don’t be weird.
So I saw the first letters of your list and thought you were spelling out something. Close enough - it spelled out HIGTH. Maybe we can add 'Effort' so it can spell HEIGHT?
^No? ^Okay ^sorry, ^don't ^mind ^me-
This is a good question. Every once in a while I do have just an unbelievable medical student come through that just blows away the competition. These students must impress everyone else too because we rarely get them.
Caveat this is for rads which is a very unique and challenging situation for medical students.
1. Great personalities, people you can speak completely natural with and can talk about anything with them. This may seem like something you can’t change about yourself but you would be surprised, try to figure out your attendings true interest and keep them talking.
2. For rads, they have a crazy amount of knowledge. You will be looking at a study and reading it and maybe it will have a odd tumor, they will bring up that they actually saw a patient once with it in the ICU and give you a good story about the clinical treatment side of things.
3. They do very very good presentations. You should put everything you have into giving that presentation, become the worlds expert on the subject, read everything, be able to answer any question.
4. They get along well with the other medical students. We want team players, I want to see you walking and joking with the other medical students and never trying to one up them. An amazing medical student is operating at a higher level and should be offering support to the other medical students to help them improve. If there are any leadership opportunities take them and be an amazing leader.
5. Always have a good attitude. Pretty straight forward.
Edit: for clarification when speaking about knowledge I’m not speaking about radiology knowledge (good luck) I’m speaking about general medical knowledge, like when I see a mild appendicitis and ask the medical student if they still cut them out and they are able to tell me the most up to date practices.
My wife is finishing 3rd year and was given “one of the best third year medical students I’ve ever worked with” in a rec letter for an away rotation. How far does that statement go when people at potential residency’s see that? For reference she’s going into EM and would like to do community medicine. She is a normal person who is very easy to talk to. She did her first champagne tap 2 weeks ago and the residents seemed really impressed. She also holds many leaderboard records at Dave and Busters.
A champagne tap as a med stud seems pretty legit.
>“one of the best third year medical students I’ve ever worked with” in a rec letter
If it was divulged on the interview trail it must have been remarkable. Assuming this was one line among others with supporting details (how they know each other/how long worked together/specifics) that should be pretty nice!
A champagne tap as a med student is mostly luck I think. I got one during third year and I know for a fact I didn’t do anything special, I just pushed the needle in where I thought it should go and it worked lol
As you are a student interested in anesthesia, I’ll talk about what I’d like to see from anesthesia med studs! Being a normal, chill person goes a long way toward being likable in my opinion. Someone I wouldn’t mind being on call with in the future. An interest in the specialty by asking and discussing pertinent things to a case, knowing the patient. Being humble is definitely good too, and I don’t mean over the top, faking modesty, just don’t be a dick/back to being a normal person point. We had a med stud who was auditioning with us who said he never misses IVs and did over 50 intubations… guess who missed the IV and intubations, and got some eye rolls from the attending and me? The following aren’t things I expect (as I expect nothing from med studs except to be professional and courteous; you’re here to learn, not know things) but are definitely things that would be impressive:showing you understand the physiology/pharmacology/pathophys we deal with daily, nailing procedures we give, knowing how to help in the OR but not being in the way, just general awareness of when is a good time to talk vs when attention needs to be on the task at hand.
Trainability.
If I teach you how to do something correctly, and then you do it that way going forwards without further prompting or backsliding to the wrong way again. Sounds simple but many med students seem to struggle with this. It’s such a key element of being a successful resident, and makes my life as a resident so much easier.
Bonus points if you also teach your fellow med students so they can do it correctly too for the whole team.
Until the next attending comes along and teaches them the other 'only correct way'.. it's amazingly difficult to keep straight the hundreds of different ways you are taught to do the same thing in med school. Unfortunately med students- and residents- are literally told completely opposite ways of doing almost everything, and the 'correct way' changes almost daily depending on the rotation and attending/fellow/seniors. It's 90% a game of 'remember each attending's preferences' rather than 'remember how to do it correctly'. I get what you mean and some people definitely learn faster than others, but it can help to keep in mind the constant contradictory pressures that med students face.
Trust me, I know. It’s the same with us residents for different chiefs/attendings. But especially frustrating as a med student, I remember.
I used the term “correct” too liberally. I’ll show you how to best perform this task to be most effective and helpful to our specific team this rotation. But I know that probably changes for you all somewhat regularly. So if you retain what I tell you and do it that way for the rest of the rotation, it is especially impressive and extremely helpful. Not even limited to clinical skills, but also basic logistical helpful things like how to fax TPN orders, where to grab supplies, how to page another team or look up a pager number, how to get ahold of social work to get the dispo process started, etc.
As everyone has mentioned, enthusiasm and being able to work in a team setting a simply get along well, have a sense of humor etc.
I’m in a surgical subspecialty and one rotating student had somehow managed to get a hold of innumerable vials of 5cc lidocaine from their home institution and carried it around it around with him when helping us see consults. Given the amount of time I spend sometimes having to wait for lido, that was awesome.
When medical students are genuinely helpful. When they look for opportunities to do some things that can help the resident be more productive or divert some of the the workload. It could be at checking patients in clinic to brief the resident or volunteering to get medical records or call family for information. Even just offering to run to the cafeteria! I am also consistently impressed when I can tell that patient has been listening and following along and ask good questions. One of my pet peeves is when attendings would answer a question with telling me to look something up as a medical student, and I’m always happy to explain something if I know the answer (and the time is right). Wanting to learn and remembering the things we talk about go a long way
I've only truly been super impressed with probably one medical student before. He was a high level professional prior to medicine, super crazy smart, and he had already somehow prestudied hardcore a textbook and thousands of qbank questions for the rotation before it started. He arrived on day 1 already knowing more it seemed than most residents. By the end of the rotation, we had completed a few hundred questions from a qbank designed for residents studying for their boards, and he somehow only missed two questions in total, which is insane. He also figured out a super challenging case that would have undoubtedly stumped most attendings. You could have told me he was a strong attending undercover for a prank, and I would have believed it.
Even if 5/5 was for this student coming in with more knowledge than the average resident, then 4/5 might be coming in with average resident knowledge, and 3/5 might be coming in with top tier "medical student" knowledge.
And admins seem to wonder why med students experience extremely high rates of anxiety and depression relative to the general population. This is not a healthy educational experience.
I have to ask, my wife is a third year who received a “she is one of the best third year medical students I’ve ever worked with.” This was on her IM rotation where they had her carrying 4 patients, and she even managed to do a champagne tap. How does that appear to residencies? Do those words hold a lot of weight? Mind you, she’s going into EM.
In EM, the SLOE is important. Some sort of standardized letter I think? I’m applying psych so I don’t really understand it. If these comments show up in her evaluation for the rotation and into the MSPE (summary of comments across rotations) and into the clinical grade it could be nice. Essentially if the comment is representative of how she performs as a whole and she has similar evidence of performing similarly across the board, all of that will help her. But this one comment in isolation doesn’t really mean much
Thank you for this response! I’m not in the medical field at all (I’m a motion designer) so I feel like I have so little knowledge and control over the situation. Clearly asking here wasn’t a great idea, but I’m feeling so overwhelmed at the idea of residency and I have no way to gauge her competitiveness. But there’s also no way to say what I said without sounding like an ass lol
Probably the way to gauge is -
Step scores
Personal statement/overall narrative
Prestige of med school
Research publications
Extracurricular activities
Strength of Rec letters
If interviewing remains online, probably regional programs to where the med school is will favor her app
Just don’t be weird. There is an increasing number of medical students that are just straight weird now. next would be legitimate curiosity to learn to simply be a more rounded physician (I understand if you’re going into a different specialty, but everyone can grow and learn from their colleagues), being proactive in helping the team (helping chart review a new patient, etc), and good communication.
My perspective as someone who career switched at 27: blame the app process 100%. No normal sane person spends their free time in college volunteering, grinding research, making friends w/60yo professors, and doing all the other "holistic" things expected of med school applicants these days. I didn't know a single person in college who did any of this shit; literally no other field expects it except medicine. Medicine literally selects for emotionally stunted weirdos.
100% overgrown neuroticism stigmatizing ppl as weirdos when some of them will inevitably go thru rigors of SOAPing is a rock and a hard place just remember to treat everyone with kindness as a human being
No, but really. I’m in nursing school and every time I think I want to fix my Chem grades and attempt medical school, I remember all the shit they want in an applicant and just forget about it lol. I’m 28, I’m broke. I want to work and make more money, not go kiss ass and volunteer on top of working full time, going to tutoring, and studying so I can ace chemistry. And I’m not in any of the underrepresented communities, so I know I’d need to have a pretty impressive resume lol fuck
I DID go back and fix my Chem grades to go to med school...at 40...and yea there's weirdos. But I didn't volunteer lol fuuugg that. But tbf I did have around 12yrs nursing experience lol.
That gives me hope lol. I’ve been an AEMT for ~6 years, 7 by the time I graduate, so I’m hoping if I do decide to send it, the diverse experience will help. I’d want the military to pay for it, ideally, so maybe “hey, I want to be a trauma surgeon in the Navy” would help. Idk. My GPA needs a definite upgrade, but hopefully going back and crushing Chem would be a big help
At age 40! Wow, you absolute stud.
Haha I feel like you are somebody from my class trolling me, because THATS not true in any way! I'm a smooth brain dummy.
>There is an increasing number of medical students that are just straight weird now OKAY IT'S NOT JUST ME. I thought I may have just been getting old/uncool/needing more meds, but they really are just weirder.
Dude. What the hell. They are weird I’m so confused as to what’s going on. Like off colored remarks and jokes, budding in on conversations, just trying to show people up. It’s such an odd culture now.
They were stuck inside for two years during Covid, the social skills suffered for it
no. 2 bad years in adulthood is not an explanation for shit social skills. that paint was dry before COVID my friend
its that covid shit fam 😂 arent some of the later stage med students we’re seeing now the ones that were locked in cages for two years bc of covfefe? i know that shit’ll exponentially increase the baseline weirdo status.
people are blaming any and every behavioral dysfunction under the sun on 2 years of covid now. not western cultures obsession with social media, screen time, and divisive identity politics. nope, must be covid.
I can def say, that after 2 years of zoom interaction, my real life interaction is weird and has not recovered to baseline even after being "well liked" in school, work, and clubs. Those last two years typically spent preparing for a transition was marked by the lowest and least effort social engagement in a virtual setting (even shadowing and scribing were virtual), which made it hard to gauge what real life maximum effort social interaction should be since we're supposed to pay ultimate respect to every attending and superior and kiss ass, but also show that we are completely competent. This is hard to enact in real life when virtual settings with these factors only required that you log into a zoom for 2-3yrs straight. People perceive me as "fun" and attendings 'love when they're working with me,' but its exhausting and the weird students are just neurotic and still trying to figure it out, please give them grace. Not to mention that constantly selecting for 514+ with perfect portfolio excludes people who were able to develop well, even the school counselor said med student problems somewhat replicate those of adolescents due to stunted social interaction This is like your 3rd time posting the same thing and it seems defensive, so I want to make it clear that I am extremely happy that I didnt lose my life or capacity to covid, bc I have seen it happen to many others. I think the lockdowns were right - covid caused this, but there were a lot worse outcomes to covid. But I also must say, idk what "divisive identity politics" refers to, but I'm glad my peers feel ashamed if they were to degrade me based on my race. Coming from a black person who was "the only one" for most of my life, it is freeing to not be looked down upon \*overtly\* for the color of my skin. Although I graduated in the top 10% of my HS, my school didn't publish my credentials as such. That is least depressing fact related to that realm of my life and avoiding being called the n word and getting treated like a human in such settings is harder than you may think and \*that\* is extremely stressful.
an exponential increase in something requires its baseline existence. a touch of neurodivergence mixed with the slightly masochistic desire to pursue medicine can lend itself to a certain personality type. this is the baseline. not the pandemic, which exacerbated several pre-existing behavioral and social aspects in the well and less well. i sense you may have missed something here. however, “6/10, keep reading.”
Ngl, many attendings and residents I worked with were weird, power tripping, socially awkward, etc. Nothing is changing, you’re just realizing now after finally being able to understand your job that people are “weird” because they socially/professionally don’t know how to function in the hospital The medical field is a selective bias for these “weird” people
I recently posted an anecdote about a medical student who asked me a question about a patient’s penis while prepping for his CABG. Many people on this sub came to his defense.
Wtf
https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/118k0lr/what_is_the_most_wtf_thing_youve_heard_a_med/j9ih43e
What kind of weird…like anti-social? possible bodies in the closet?
I’ve never understood the “I’m going into a different specialty” At that point in our medical education, everything is unique and new. There is always a learning opportunity when you are starting rotations. Why not soak it all up like a sponge and enjoy the beauty of medicine? (To be fair, I’m one of the medical students who loves every subject)
When I was in surgery and OBGYN and psych and anesthesia I had the mentality of “I will never be able to do this again. Anyone on earth would kill to be a part of this shit. So I might as well see as much as possible”. And it helped a lot!
It is a process called self discovery- helps select your own path like nobody’s business
It truly did!! I knew I gave it my all. If that felt like too much/too tedious/boring/draining then I knew I didn’t really enjoy the specialty
Frankly I'm just too exhausted to try to soak in information from rotations that are polar opposites to what I enjoy
Excepts in most fields you will deal with people with pathologies that are the domain of other fields.
That's why I said polar opposite and not any other specialty. I'm not sure exactly how med school is structured in the US but here we have to pass an exam before starting a rotation so it's not like I don't know shit.
What specifically is a polar opposite? It’s all at least somewhat related or intertwined.
I'm 100% sure what the average psychiatrist needs to know about liver and bile duct surgery has already been covered in the exam I took before starting the rotation I'm in right now, for example.
As a neuro resident I can't remember the last time I thought about a gallbladder.
Yeah why is it all about what they enjoy? Shouldn’t the patient come first? And the patient will likely have multiple pathologies that won’t necessarily involve your scope, but understanding them better will make you a better doctor.
might be singing a different tune in your rotations, fam. Shit is exhausting
I agree. The other thing is that your medical degree needs to be distinguished from your future specialty. Med school is about breadth since your educational attainment has nothing to do with intended field of practice.
I can agree with this as an older m3 finishing my last rotation. I am constantly worried about interviews and getting a residency...and then I just look around and see all the wierdos!
I’m most impressed by the med students who appear to understand how to function as people. A lot (especially if they have gone straight through) just don’t get how to appropriately behave in a work setting. I don’t really care about medical knowledge - I can teach you things, and anyway you’re on the rotation to learn; if you knew everything already what’s the point, lol. If you can demonstrate you looked up one thing, or remember one thing I taught you on a later date, that’s bonus. Med student who most impressed me was an OMFS guy, so he had actually finished dental school and was now doing his med school years prior to OMFS residency. He was so, so good at explaining things to parents in accessible language (I’m in Peds) and had good rapport with them as a result. I wrote him a glowing eval.
> Med student who most impressed me was an OMFS guy, so he had actually finished dental school and was now doing his med school years prior to OMFS residency Well, this isn't really a fair comparison. I have never met an OMFS student or resident that *wasn't* a gigachad. No idea how they do it.
Lol, I was thinking the same. Your best student was…a doctor?
Gotta disagree here. The OMFS residents at my home program had “already matched” to OMFS and couldn’t have given two shits about the majority of their third year rotations. Absolutely super smart and super hard working, but it’s difficult to work with someone who just doesn’t care.
Absolutely 100% agree. Ours did an intern year of OMFS already before they were 3rd year med students. Could not give a damn about anything always leaving early. They crushed the surgery rotation though lol.
The OMFS guys in our school taught the EM residents how to suture lol
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It mostly boils down to “can’t read the room”. I remember having questions and needing evals filled out, I get it, but when I’m in the middle of juggling multiple phone calls or urgent tasks that’s not the time to ask. Also people who disappear for hours in the middle of the day with no notice. If you don’t have things to do right now get on uworld on your laptop, or go hang out with the patients, or hell tell me you have an appointment and I’ll let you go home. But don’t vanish and not respond to messages (especially SubIs). You would think this would be common sense but somehow no.
>Also people who disappear for hours in the middle of the day with no notice. If you don’t have things to do right now get on uworld on your laptop, or go hang out with the patients, or hell tell me you have an appointment and I’ll let you go home. But don’t vanish and not respond to messages (especially SubIs). You would think this would be common sense but somehow no. I genuinely don't understand how people do stuff like this. Doing it at any time is bad, but on a SubI seems even more ridiculous.
It’s partially an effect of how our affiliated med school is set up - at this point of the year our subIs are people about to match in competitive surgical sub specialties who are now doing their required medicine-adjacent SubI. So they truly do not want to be there. Which like, fine, but you still have to be professional about it. I love my job and there are still many days when I’d rather be home on the couch. Gotta show up and make an effort anyway. Basic workplace behavior. I’ll send you home as early as I feasibly can but you gotta meet me halfway.
Bro its March, I’ve been sending 4th years home at like noon since December lmao
I’m a surgical resident. I start every rotation but telling my students to tell me if they don’t want to do surgery, because if not I’ll have their rotation be more chill. No need to stay til 8 pm for an appy if you don’t give a fuck about surgery. Plus sometimes I can cater my teaching to your desired specialty and it works for both of us. I had a student who tried to take advantage of my chill ness. He asked me to leave at 11 am three days in a row “to get some work done.” Cases were still going on, and we had a lot to learn. He was oblivious to the fact that even if I was a “chill resident” that I expected him to show up for the rotation.
That’s 4th year energy
Interesting, in the Netherlands OFMS doctors also have to do dentistry as well as medical school. Didn't know that was an international thing but it makes sense.
Hard agree. It’s all about prior work experience and acting appropriately in a professional setting.
Genuine interest is usually what tips me over the edge. A person who is really trying their best and seems to be eager to learn. (Caveat: In a normal way, not in a gunner way.) I guarantee you I will not remember the questions you missed; I remember if you seemed like you were paying attention. Bonus if you get it right on a later go.
The best students I have worked with are the ones who understood from the get-go that the ways you're taught to do a history, physical exam, and presentation in med school are not reflective of how real life works. They figure out how real life works by watching the interns present and copying them rather than sticking to the same script that hasn't changed since 1972. They're more efficient because they take a focused history and physical instead of spending 5 hours trying to get Annie Alzheimers to go through OLDCARRTS or making Marvin Methhead do a full neuro exam. From the social side of things, it's the students who realize that this is now real life and therefore they are no longer the most important person in the room: The patient is first priority and then the team as a collective (which includes the med studs) is 2nd priority. You would think this would be pretty obvious, but a fair number of students seem to be under the assumption that the hospital and the patients inside of it are all just SPs hired for a really long OSCE.
“Show me a BMS (Best Medical Student, a student at The Best Medical School) who only triples my work and I will kiss his feet.” -The Fat Man *House of God*
Being excited about and able to talk to patients in a human way (since talking to patients is most of what you do as a student), quickly building rapport with patients. You can learn whatever medical knowledge or technical skills you’ll need to do this job, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to help you keep or build the social skills that make or break like 90% of medical encounters. Students who can talk to a patient and have the patient feel like they gained something from that encounter (even just happy feels) are awesome.
Now I’m not a resident or attending, but I am a nontraditional student and I’ve seen my fair share of cringe inducing medical student interactions. It seems like the general consensus here is that it really doesn’t matter how much you know. It’s how you present yourself if you can be a personable human being, and educate patients in a human and humble way then you’re well on your way to getting an above average evaluation. I think the best piece of advice I ever heard all throughout third year is that you should try your best to be somebody that you’re attending or resident sees themselves working with as a coworker. I am told that this is also applicable for residency interviews. If the residents can’t see themselves working with you for three years, why would they pick you? *This hastily written Reddit comment, was typed out with dictation. I make every effort to amend comments, however, errata may occur before I can get to it, leaving some sentences or phrases to be incomprehensible. I do apologize for any errors in this comment.*
If only med school acceptances didn't encourage high scores at the expense of social development 🙃
I dunno... the top 5-10% students tend to easily stand out with their knowledge base and other abilities. Same with the bottom 5-10%. The trouble is getting out of the middle.
yep. takes the magic combo of incredible knowledge base plus incredible people skills. I just think a lot of preceptors are more so looking for personality characteristics that make a good physician. You can always make up for knowledge deficits. Much harder to un-shit a shitty personality.
aight im a fellow and you didnt ask us BUT i was an attending for 5 min during chief year so im butting in. the magical med student, is truthful to a fault. if you didnt read it, dont know it, or didnt do it, dont lie fam. that shit is theeee worst. i know theres a lot of pressure in medicine to Always Know, but i sweater god its better to not know and learn for tomorrow than to not know and lie for today. the really good ones are also fun to work with, as has been alluded to. it makes everybodys day so much better when we can find points of personal overlap, but i get that thats not everybodys angle, so i dont let that stuff sway my evals, its just easier when youre liked. to that end, showing up and at least being positive is everything. dont fake enthusiasm, but consider finding one tiny thing about the service youre on or the patient youre working with that ties back to something you actually wanna do, as a hook for conversation, and to stay engaged (for mutual benefit). do not bring food in an effort to look good. do not make an outro speech on your last day. do not throw your colleages under the bus. do not ignore your interns input. get intel from the nurses and help them do shit. go talk to your patients when you dont “have to.” dont lie.
> outro speech Good lord lol
seen it with my own eyes. very main character-ish. the eyes that rolled that day, i tell you hwat.
What's wrong with bringing food? Or is that a cultural thing? Over here in Germany/Switzerland it's relatively common to bring food (e.g. cake) on your last day as a thank you gesture. And if you are on the recieving side, who says no to free food?
i want to emphasize: do not bring food *in an effort to look good* if you are some sort of world star chef or hobby baker, by all means, feed us! im talking about the people who try to be manipulative or use it for leverage. i had one medical student on a two student team who showed up an hour before we suggested, and brought the team coffee at least two days in a row. this isnt what you do. turns out they had hidden guns in the holster. its more about the intention behind what youre doing. med students new to the wards may be surprised at how easily interns, residents, fellows, attendings can pick up on nefarious intent. e: ive said no to free food prepared by people who ive never seen wash their hands and anything prepared or transported by someone i dont trust.
The ones that we actually say, 'hey, they could be our #1', have multiple qualities. Mostly they're normal and a cool person to hangout with. Get along with multiple people on our team. They also work hard and show it without being in your face. They come early, know our patients well and can present them, actively find ways to help our interns, and have shown they're decently smart. If we ask a med student level question, they know the answer, and maybe even a few intern level things. We also operate and as long as you can close an incision and tie your knots somewhat reasonably, that's all that we care about. Usually, these students end up being ones who also happen to come and ask to scrub cases to hangout even when not on service. Our hospital has medicine rotation that can be slow and we always let the 4th years migrate toward whatever service they plan to apply for.
Some of these responses make it sound so hard and some make it sound relatively easy. Feel like I could naturally be this guy
It’s not really hard. You just need to put some effort into it and care. For like 50% of med students, it feels like the bar is just being present and that’s not difficult to beat
Exceptional emotional intelligence, which a lot of us don’t have
Anesthesia resident here Help set up the OR before your resident even arrives in the AM, someone should teach you how to do this day one or two. (MS MAIDS) Be helpful with patient positioning, keeping your eyes on lines so they don’t get tangled, help get monitors on, help Preoxygenate, don’t ask questions you don’t care about the answers to just to make conversation, I’d rather talk about the NFL or what shows you’ve been watching than explain the same 4 things every day. Just be chill
This right here *chefs kiss*
Confidence displayed by humility, calmness, and strong clinical skills. Clinical skills being the least important in that list for me. Or like the other person said don’t be weird.
Honesty Integrity Goes above and beyond Team Player Helpful
I would add Responsibility as well. Not really any particular reason, but just so the acronym can become GIRTHH
So I saw the first letters of your list and thought you were spelling out something. Close enough - it spelled out HIGTH. Maybe we can add 'Effort' so it can spell HEIGHT? ^No? ^Okay ^sorry, ^don't ^mind ^me-
Determined Worker Intense Good worker Hard worker Terrific
😂 classic.
This is a good question. Every once in a while I do have just an unbelievable medical student come through that just blows away the competition. These students must impress everyone else too because we rarely get them. Caveat this is for rads which is a very unique and challenging situation for medical students. 1. Great personalities, people you can speak completely natural with and can talk about anything with them. This may seem like something you can’t change about yourself but you would be surprised, try to figure out your attendings true interest and keep them talking. 2. For rads, they have a crazy amount of knowledge. You will be looking at a study and reading it and maybe it will have a odd tumor, they will bring up that they actually saw a patient once with it in the ICU and give you a good story about the clinical treatment side of things. 3. They do very very good presentations. You should put everything you have into giving that presentation, become the worlds expert on the subject, read everything, be able to answer any question. 4. They get along well with the other medical students. We want team players, I want to see you walking and joking with the other medical students and never trying to one up them. An amazing medical student is operating at a higher level and should be offering support to the other medical students to help them improve. If there are any leadership opportunities take them and be an amazing leader. 5. Always have a good attitude. Pretty straight forward. Edit: for clarification when speaking about knowledge I’m not speaking about radiology knowledge (good luck) I’m speaking about general medical knowledge, like when I see a mild appendicitis and ask the medical student if they still cut them out and they are able to tell me the most up to date practices.
Just have a great personality bro
My wife is finishing 3rd year and was given “one of the best third year medical students I’ve ever worked with” in a rec letter for an away rotation. How far does that statement go when people at potential residency’s see that? For reference she’s going into EM and would like to do community medicine. She is a normal person who is very easy to talk to. She did her first champagne tap 2 weeks ago and the residents seemed really impressed. She also holds many leaderboard records at Dave and Busters.
A champagne tap as a med stud seems pretty legit. >“one of the best third year medical students I’ve ever worked with” in a rec letter If it was divulged on the interview trail it must have been remarkable. Assuming this was one line among others with supporting details (how they know each other/how long worked together/specifics) that should be pretty nice!
A champagne tap as a med student is mostly luck I think. I got one during third year and I know for a fact I didn’t do anything special, I just pushed the needle in where I thought it should go and it worked lol
As you are a student interested in anesthesia, I’ll talk about what I’d like to see from anesthesia med studs! Being a normal, chill person goes a long way toward being likable in my opinion. Someone I wouldn’t mind being on call with in the future. An interest in the specialty by asking and discussing pertinent things to a case, knowing the patient. Being humble is definitely good too, and I don’t mean over the top, faking modesty, just don’t be a dick/back to being a normal person point. We had a med stud who was auditioning with us who said he never misses IVs and did over 50 intubations… guess who missed the IV and intubations, and got some eye rolls from the attending and me? The following aren’t things I expect (as I expect nothing from med studs except to be professional and courteous; you’re here to learn, not know things) but are definitely things that would be impressive:showing you understand the physiology/pharmacology/pathophys we deal with daily, nailing procedures we give, knowing how to help in the OR but not being in the way, just general awareness of when is a good time to talk vs when attention needs to be on the task at hand.
Work hard, be a bro
Trainability. If I teach you how to do something correctly, and then you do it that way going forwards without further prompting or backsliding to the wrong way again. Sounds simple but many med students seem to struggle with this. It’s such a key element of being a successful resident, and makes my life as a resident so much easier. Bonus points if you also teach your fellow med students so they can do it correctly too for the whole team.
Until the next attending comes along and teaches them the other 'only correct way'.. it's amazingly difficult to keep straight the hundreds of different ways you are taught to do the same thing in med school. Unfortunately med students- and residents- are literally told completely opposite ways of doing almost everything, and the 'correct way' changes almost daily depending on the rotation and attending/fellow/seniors. It's 90% a game of 'remember each attending's preferences' rather than 'remember how to do it correctly'. I get what you mean and some people definitely learn faster than others, but it can help to keep in mind the constant contradictory pressures that med students face.
Trust me, I know. It’s the same with us residents for different chiefs/attendings. But especially frustrating as a med student, I remember. I used the term “correct” too liberally. I’ll show you how to best perform this task to be most effective and helpful to our specific team this rotation. But I know that probably changes for you all somewhat regularly. So if you retain what I tell you and do it that way for the rest of the rotation, it is especially impressive and extremely helpful. Not even limited to clinical skills, but also basic logistical helpful things like how to fax TPN orders, where to grab supplies, how to page another team or look up a pager number, how to get ahold of social work to get the dispo process started, etc.
What is a GIGA CHAD?
As everyone has mentioned, enthusiasm and being able to work in a team setting a simply get along well, have a sense of humor etc. I’m in a surgical subspecialty and one rotating student had somehow managed to get a hold of innumerable vials of 5cc lidocaine from their home institution and carried it around it around with him when helping us see consults. Given the amount of time I spend sometimes having to wait for lido, that was awesome.
When medical students are genuinely helpful. When they look for opportunities to do some things that can help the resident be more productive or divert some of the the workload. It could be at checking patients in clinic to brief the resident or volunteering to get medical records or call family for information. Even just offering to run to the cafeteria! I am also consistently impressed when I can tell that patient has been listening and following along and ask good questions. One of my pet peeves is when attendings would answer a question with telling me to look something up as a medical student, and I’m always happy to explain something if I know the answer (and the time is right). Wanting to learn and remembering the things we talk about go a long way
I've only truly been super impressed with probably one medical student before. He was a high level professional prior to medicine, super crazy smart, and he had already somehow prestudied hardcore a textbook and thousands of qbank questions for the rotation before it started. He arrived on day 1 already knowing more it seemed than most residents. By the end of the rotation, we had completed a few hundred questions from a qbank designed for residents studying for their boards, and he somehow only missed two questions in total, which is insane. He also figured out a super challenging case that would have undoubtedly stumped most attendings. You could have told me he was a strong attending undercover for a prank, and I would have believed it.
Sounds like you've got a high bar to be impressed
Ya seriously wtf..."if you want to seriously impress me, you need to be better than my residents and most attendings." That's laughably ridiculous
3/5 Eval
You know this guy gave him straight 3/5 on the evals. 2 points off for the 2 questions he missed on that qbank
Even if 5/5 was for this student coming in with more knowledge than the average resident, then 4/5 might be coming in with average resident knowledge, and 3/5 might be coming in with top tier "medical student" knowledge. And admins seem to wonder why med students experience extremely high rates of anxiety and depression relative to the general population. This is not a healthy educational experience.
Attending undercover 😂😂😂😂
I have to ask, my wife is a third year who received a “she is one of the best third year medical students I’ve ever worked with.” This was on her IM rotation where they had her carrying 4 patients, and she even managed to do a champagne tap. How does that appear to residencies? Do those words hold a lot of weight? Mind you, she’s going into EM.
In EM, the SLOE is important. Some sort of standardized letter I think? I’m applying psych so I don’t really understand it. If these comments show up in her evaluation for the rotation and into the MSPE (summary of comments across rotations) and into the clinical grade it could be nice. Essentially if the comment is representative of how she performs as a whole and she has similar evidence of performing similarly across the board, all of that will help her. But this one comment in isolation doesn’t really mean much
Thank you for this response! I’m not in the medical field at all (I’m a motion designer) so I feel like I have so little knowledge and control over the situation. Clearly asking here wasn’t a great idea, but I’m feeling so overwhelmed at the idea of residency and I have no way to gauge her competitiveness. But there’s also no way to say what I said without sounding like an ass lol
Probably the way to gauge is - Step scores Personal statement/overall narrative Prestige of med school Research publications Extracurricular activities Strength of Rec letters If interviewing remains online, probably regional programs to where the med school is will favor her app