I wasnt't a med student that long ago but I wanted to touch on what I think makes a good med student on a team.
This is just what I think, other people might be more lenient or more strict than I am.
A good med student will:
1. Show up early or be on time. If you're late, I think you don't really care that much for the rotation
2. Ask questions on rounds. I sure as hell don't know everything about medicine
so I ask a lot of questions on rounds. If you just follow us around and aren't seeing any patients yourself, at least join the dialogue and ask good questions.
3. Ask good, thought-provoking questions. Dumb questions do exist and they waste time. Don't ask "what's the dose for this?" when you can look it up. You should ask something like "If we maxed the patient on medicine X, where would we go from there?"
4. Realize that patients do not remain stable. If a patient looks like they're getting sicker, let us know. We can go reasses with you, or you can reassess when we're busy with other things and we'll follow up with you right away.
5. Find the time to look up information and share it with the team. It would be great if you could search for articles in your spare time, evaluate them, and share them with us.
6. Spend more time talking to patients. Not just H&P stuff, but asking them how they're feeling, if they are still nauseated, if their pain is controlled, if they're still oozing from a site.
7. Not know everything. This is ok. We won't think you're a failure if you can't name 254 reasons for abnormal lab value X. I personally don't care. You're here to learn
8. Will respect patients. I don't tolerate people calling patients names when we're in the team room or in the hallway. I haven't reprimanded anyone for that yet, but I tell students just to not dehumanize patients.
9. Make a short presentation on a topic. You'll be surprised with how much you learn going through primary sources and see how well the foundation for certain treatments holds
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