Things you shouldn't say to your consultant

Ok, so this is a few weeks late. But since I'm again oncall and have to work with medical students I thought I'd share this experience from last month.

It's hard to stay motivated at this time of the academic year. The final year medstudents have their residencies lined up and will be out the door in a few weeks. Ditto for the final year residents. After all, I've been there. After 6 years of post-grad training.

We call it 'senioritis'.

The opposite of 'seniocephalus'.

The latter being early in your final year, when your head swells up to immense proportions from being a senior and having the knowledge and authority to push your interns around. In the former, you're just so sick of residency/fellowship/medschool that you just want to get on to greener pastures (except you don't yet know 'greener' refers to the skin color you assume when you actually do start work in the next step). You don't give a damn anymore.

And so, being the teacher to such students, at this time of the year, can be a major pain in the ass. I like teaching, I really do. After rounds everyday, I do set aside at least 15-30 mins running a discussion/didactic on a topic of our choosing. But really, there is nothing more irritating than wasting your time with uninterested, indifferent medical students. The ignorant but keen ones I don't mind, after all, we're there to teach. But the uninterested ones, I'd rather be sliding down a razor blade on my scrotum.

And so, at this time of the year, it's not unusual to be working with people whose minds are in la-la-land. Case in mind, this young lady I had last month. She knew nothing of the questions I asked her. Never even tried. So, to try to give her a chance, I gave her several reading assignments, on pretty basic stuff like osteoporosis (relevant to her since she was going into family medicine).

When I asked her to tell us what she had read the next day, she said she hadn't done so yet. Her excuse?

"But it was Mardi Gras yesterday!"

>_<

The things you want to say (but can't) (since it's not acceptable to yell at students here- I did write her a bad review though).

I'm just glad she's not going to be the physician caring for any of MY loved ones.