My top reasons why third and fourth year absolutely suck

Reasons why third and fourth years are frustrating, lowkey suck:

This is obviously me venting and I don’t blame the attendings/residents for this at all, they have no say in a lot of this. Also I know we are just medical students, they don’t expect much from us but it’s still frustrating. These are specific to me as a DO student , your experience might be very different. Hopefully residency is better, otherwise I don’t know how I’ll survive it.

  1. Having little to no say in your third year rotation site/schedule. Having to commute 50 mins while others commute 10 minutes. If you’re lucky, they’ll tell you about your site 2 weeks before, it’s usually 1 week prior to starting.
  2. You start at a new site every month. New building, new doctors, new staff, new everything. The first week is literally you trying to adjust and not getting lost.
  3. Your badge doesn’t even give you access to most elevators/buildings.
  4. You have no idea what the schedule is like. You arrive and find out it’s a call day, you end up staying until 6pm. You don’t know if you’re expected to work the weekend until that Friday.
  5. Not being allowed to use desktops in the resident work room since they are reserved for residents. Having to use your own laptop, without a mouse to navigate epic which keeps glitching. So it takes forever to do your notes and even the intern goes home before you.
  6. Your login to EMR doesn’t even let you see charts/write notes (looking at your Meditech) so you are waiting around for the resident to come back from rounds to log you in.
  7. Not being in the loop about your patients since nurses, residents, attendings usually communicate with each other using their phones and chats messages you are not a part of. They literally forget about you and then ask you why you didn’t scrub into the C-section that you didn’t know was happening.
  8. Not being able to use the snacks/food reserved for the residents.
  9. Being asked to present on stuff when you have to study or work on your ERAS application after coming home.
  10. Residents/attendings not even reading your note that you spend so much time on, they delete it and start over.
  11. Not being able to use Epic on your device while on rounds so you can’t look at things you missed, while the residents can.
  12. Constantly trying to impress residents and attendings.
  13. Resident referring to you as the “med student” instead of using your name.
  14. Feel shitty correctly answering questions after the resident got it wrong because you don’t want to make the resident look bad.
  15. Attendings not even listening to your presentation of patients so you’re just useless.
  16. Attending on your team never even asking your name and talking only to the resident.
  17. Attending expecting you to ask very specific questions during patient interviews. While they have known them for years, you’re just meeting them for the first time.
  18. Think you’ll bother the attending if you ask too many questions and then you get feedback saying you “seemed disinterested”.
  19. Trying to connect with attendings for a LOR although you only work with for a few days since they change ever few days.
  20. Your surgery attending texting you at 5am for an 8am surgery so you wake up every few hours to make sure you didn’t miss a text.
  21. Not being able to see patient list at home so you don’t know that your first patient cancelled which would allow you to get more sleep. You get to clinic and wait an hour for the attending to show up or they end up missing a day and you are then told to go home.
  22. Waiting around to be dismissed. Hate playing guessing games.
  23. Your fellow student brings cupcakes on the last day while you show up with nothing and feel like they definitely like them more than you.

Things that were awesome about it:

  1. Having NO responsibility, literally no cares if you don’t show up, except med school admin.
  2. Assisting in surgeries and C-sections. Having the privilege of seeing babies being born, being a part of such intimate things. Suturing actual human skin. Holding a placenta. Patient letting you talk/touch them even if you’re just a student and it’s for our learning only.
  3. Connecting with patients and them congratulating you on being in medical school and being grateful for you. Patients who notice you.