Still Bitter About This

Subjective evaluations can be a blessing or a curse. If you're personable and a good student, it's easy to win clinicians over, except for the staunch few who have very high standards--sometimes impossibly high. My feedback throughout final year was a rollercoaster of anxiety as I waited to find out how I did on each roster. The way it worked was that after the roster was over, a clinician or a committee would grade each student and post it to an online system. Your grades were generally 1-5 in a series of categories, including knowledge, professional conduct, and practical skills, accompanied by a comments box.

For the most part, my grades aren't worth talking about. I did well in some, average in others. I worked hard and sometimes it paid off and sometimes it didn't. But a year later, there's still one evaluation that I remember keenly. And it's not so much because I did poorly, but rather that concept that so often makes barbs stick in your memory: injustice.

You see, this was a clinic I had chosen to go visit, for an elective week. It was a small animal clinic right in town. I'd spent a week shadowing them in third year, and at the end of it, they'd welcomed me to come back in final year. So I did. I probably shouldn't have.

Firstly, it's not the greatest clinic. The facility was dark, cramped, and dreary, and the medical practices were... average. Anaesthetic monitoring was subpar, in-patient cages were lined only with newspaper, there were practically no in-house lab options. But hey, this is the point of clinical rotations: see what's done well and what isn't done well. The issues arose, I think, because I was bored out of my freaking mind.

Even though this clinic has a student almost every week of the year, they don't seem well adjusted to having students. There was literally nothing for me to do, ever, and there was also no place for me to sit or stand that wasn't in the way. I can understand that some clinics aren't comfortable allowing students to participate in procedures (even though every other place I spent time with was happy for a final year student to get as hands-on as possible), and I can understand that they don't exist with the aim of mentoring me and making my life better. But, really, when there's a slow schedule, and all I've been doing is standing next to a wall for hours, you can't expect me to not try to make better use of my time. Thing is, in fifth year, we had an absolutely obscene number of assignments, and if I wasn't learning anything, I honestly couldn't afford to stand around.

One really annoying thing was that they had no internet. Not just no wireless, there was no internet on the computers at all, except for the practice owner's office. If you wanted to look up a drug or a disease, forget it. This added to the whole "dark ages" feel of the place. Fortunately, I had a few things I could work on without internet, so during slow periods when there were no consults or surgeries, I opened a separate window on one of the computers and got to work. No one ever said anything to me, but in my evaluation after the fact, they wrote that at one point, I started working when the billing on that computer hadn't been finished. Mind you, I only sat down when there was no one around and nothing going on. Did anyone ever ask me to move, or to use the computer briefly? No. But they got irritated enough by my presence to complain and have it put down in my evaluation.

The other comment that really stands out in my memory is that apparently I was asking questions at inappropriate times. They said it was good of me to show enthusiasm, but I really needed to be more appropriate about when and where I asked questions. I've wondered and wondered, and I still have no idea what triggered that comment. I do always ask questions, and I asked plenty there, because--like I mentioned--I had nothing else to do and no one was engaging me in anything. So I'd chat with the surgeons during surgery, and I'd ask case-related questions between consults. Where was the transgression? Did they feel I was holding them up between consults? Again, no one ever said anything to me.

What really makes getting a bad grade on that rotation hurt is how polite they were to my face. They welcomed me to come back to their clinic, knowing who I was and what I was like, and they let me wander around trying to find things to do to keep busy without comment. They said kind things to me and wished me well, and then graded me lower than almost any other rotation of final year.

It doesn't matter in the slightest, because I got an A in clinics, good references, and a good job. I know that particular clinic is a miserable work environment with poor medical practices, and having students around must have been too much extra stress for them. But you know what? I'm still bitter about those comments.