Unpleasant chores for third-year medical students?/Who supervises medical residents?

[shanrina]

Two questions. Hope that's okay

Comments

[nicosian]

if you're not in a rush, I can ask my friend who is a doctor. She's been useful with literary research on details before. Lemme drop her an email, she's got the best stories, too.:D

[shanrina]

I would love that. Thanks so much. (Also, hi! I didn't know you were a member here, too.)

[alisanne]

So you're mixing terms here a little. A medical student is still a student, even in his third year. The third and fourth years of med school are when med students do clinical rotations under the supervision of medical residents and attending physicians. As far as chores med students do: it would mainly be things like writing up long, very detailed histories on patients, drawing blood (usually under the supervision of phlebotomists), tracking down missing records and X-rays, maybe running charts to people, or possibly accompanying patients to their tests.
Once you graduate from medical school you become a resident. First year residents (or interns) are supervised by second or third year residents (or sometimes sub specialty fellows) who are all in turn supervised by attending physicians.
I hope that helps!

[shanrina]

Thanks, that definitely helps. I think I must have been mixing up rotations and residencies somehow.

Do you know if records or X-rays have gone missing where they typically wind up being? I mean, do they get thrown out by accident? Is it more likely that they'd be misfiled?

[alisanne]

From my own experience, missing X-rays seemed to end up shoved in a drawer somewhere or perhaps in the residents review rooms on patient floors. Since they are digital now and you can always make a CD, that doesn't tend to matter as much these days, but in the old days (back when I was in medical school) we were always coming across someone's old films tucked away in the corner of a cabinet.

[shanrina]

Ooh, I forgot about digital (which I shouldn't have because I have some X-rays on CD). Thanks!

[delordra]

Medical students are not residents. Residents have graduated from medical school and are doing post-graduate training in their specialty. 3rd year medical students generally do rotate in hospitals, and are sometimes introduced as "student doctor", but they are not actually doctors yet. Interns (1st year after graduating from medical school) and residents (2nd year and beyond after medical school) are technically doctors because they have their MD degrees, but they are still in training in their specialty for 3-7 years

[shanrina]

Thanks! Very helpful. :)

[elialshadowpine]

To add to this, I've also had doctors ask if I minded their medical student (about the same time you're talking about, I think) to sit in on appts. One was my endo for my PCOS, because I have a very severe case and have quite a lot of the physical markers. The doc basically went over my body and explained to the student the presentation, and things to look for in diagnosis (it was actually really cool because I learned a lot more myself than I otherwise would have!). The other was my psych at the same hospital, who had a student in because I have a somewhat complicated situation between my psych and physical issues. She would ask leading questions, and because I was somewhat out of it, I'd answer them -- and be correct. My psych was (thankfully) amused, mentioned the questions were intended for the student, but that it was awesome that I was educated and aware (and joked that maybe I should be going to medical school).

[marjun]

The rotating that 3rd and 4th year medical students do are sometimes called "clerkships." At the end of the 8-week clerkship, they have a "shelf exam." The 4th years are usually traveling around, doing interviews for residencies, so they don't have as many of those exams. If you don't know about the "Match," you should look that up...everything about it permeates the last two years of med school. Also, they have to take the USMLE Step 2 exams, the CK (clinical knowledge) and the CS (clinical skills).