How not to be a 3rd year

I have had the supreme privilege of working alongside a 3rd year student during my MICU rotation. I havent quite figured this person out. I think she is sharp, but I just cant figure out how she can see three ICU patients in 15 minutes and be totally up to date and ready to present. The only possible way would be to Only read the nursing notes, have the nurse tell you everything they know, only glance at the labs that got printed and placed on the chart, and Not examine the patient. The part that really really annoys me though is that this person gets away with it! The plan is to talk about nothing and skillfully avoid any pimping. I have picked up on this bs-ing during rounds. Whenever the attending asks about a lab, she never knows and grabs the chart. Whenever the attending mentions a lab, CT, CXR whatever she agrees, but I can see in her eyes she has no clue. Whatever, I tried giving her some tips, but she will slack her way through another rotation. At some point this wont work anymore and she will find herself unpracticed and alone. I must admit, when I did my 3rd year ICU rotation I was totally clueless. At least I admitted it and was willing to learn. If you just pretend you know, then you never really learn to think for yourself. My favorite conversation heard:


MS3: You want to hear about how I got interested in Medicine?

Attending: No, I never really cared much for that kiss ass crap.

Okay, so it wasn't my imagination after all. We are supposed to alternate admissions and thus get a few H&Ps each, right?. Well I would love to do them all, it is way more interesting than sitting around waiting for something to happen. When this MS3 picks up a patient, there is no H+P, hmm that's strange,it never got transcribed?!?! I personally like doing the H+Ps in ICU, otherwise you really have no idea what is going on with the patient. It would be like writing a report about some topic you didn't research. Anyway, enough of my rant. I am so glad this part is almost over. Match day is next week, I have bigger things to worry about than some slacker med student. Besides, by comparison my work looks spectacular.

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