Student evaluations

I'm not sure if I get to evaluate the students on my service. If I do, I'm going to be in a boatload of trouble. One of them will be incredibly easy to evaluate. She was a better student than me, and I'm the sub-intern. The other two students were fine. They did a good job. The last student... that's where the trouble lies. She did okay, but she didn't correct some things that I specifically asked her to correct. She didn't see her patients before rounds. She was late a lot. She didn't bother to attend rounds today. And our service is so light, I'm not sure how this is in any way excusable.

I thought a lot about what I did as a 3rd year student. I came in on my day off to personally calculate the QTc on one of my patients on a med that prolongs QT. The nursing staff was confused. Why wasn't I wearing a tie? I tracked down results of tests and curbsided attendings left and right. I often knew my patients much better than my interns. Not that I was showing them up. I just made their life a million times easier. I knew the labs. I knew the test results. I knew the schedule for the OR.

On the first full day of surgery, I didn't see all of my patients, and my resident asked me to present on one of the patients I hadn't seen. I told him that I had not seen the patient. "And...?" he said, expecting an excuse. I was late. I didn't know where she was. I couldn't find the chart. I didn't know what I was doing. I was tracking down another problem. Some sort of excuse.

My reply: "And it'll never happen again." And it never did. My resident was impressed by my response. Truth be told, all anyone looks for in a med student is effort, the willingness to do the work. One of my students didn't care at all for medicine, but I asked him to see his patients and write his notes on time, and he did. I asked him to list the meds for me. He did. He wasn't stellar, but he was earnest and put in the time. I can't ask for much more.

So my problem remains. I keep thinking that it's not my place to criticize. I think that I'm holding this one student to a standard that is too high. But the reality of the situation is that she did not put in the work. The bottom line is that I could not trust her.