Most residency programs offer an education stipend or allowance. If you’ve purchased anything related to your training lately, make sure you submit your receipts. I posted Reimbursement Request Templates in the RookieDoc Members Area. Just plug in your information, print, and hand it in to your program.
By the way, for those of you in the RookieDoc Mastery Orientation Program, make sure you submit your receipts for reimbursement. RookieDoctor.com services should count under your education stipend. If your program does not reimburse you, send me the program address and a contact person and I’ll see what I can do. So far, every program that receipts have been submitted to have accepted them.
Be very careful… Jokes and things done to make people feel better are not always about the intentions behind them. Even intending good, you may offend someone or make them feel violated. In this case, a surgeon was sued for giving a temporary tattoo. Kind of cute to some… deeply violated to others.
And the point is not to be careful just because you will get sued. No. Be careful, because you may leave someone feeling violated and you might get sued. Both.
Personally, I’d have trouble sleeping in either case.
Just an FYI for students of the RookieDoc Mastery Orientation. There’s a bonus module posted on going beyond “surviving” internship and residency. There’s a spectrum with “failure” on one end and “mastery” on the other. And, frankly, “survival” is too close to failure. Find out what’s next notch over closer to “mastery”.
By the way, it’s not too late to join the RookieDoc Mastery Orientation 2.0 program. But the remaining Fast-Action Bonuses go away on Thursday, July 24th at 6pm Eastern.
OK. Normally, I probably wouldn’t highlight a hospital ranking article for new interns and residents, but this one is very well done. It is a great article to learn from. US News and World Report’s America’s Best Hospitals covers ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) protocols, bedside manner, handoffs and signout, turf battles between specialties, getting feedback from patients, and more. Although it is written as if you know very little about medicine and surgery, there are some great lessons and perspective changers for med students, interns, and residents.
There’s so much stuff in this Module, that you should stop reading this blog post right now and go get started with the “Start Here” video. Then, move on to the MP3 downloads, the videos, and the handouts. More on the way too.
A huge part of your training is getting feedback – constructive feedback. Too often you will come across upper level residents, attendings, and supervisors who give useless feedback. And you should not settle for feedback that is useless.
Here’s what I mean…
Let’s say you go and ask your attending, “Dr. BossMan, I was just wondering how I’m doing. Am I doing okay?”
You will see, the problem lies in how you asked the question. Invariably, the answer will be “Fine. You’re doing fine.” Or, “You’re doing great. You have nothing to worry about.”
Useless. Completely and utterly useless.
This kind of “feedback” will not help you improve. It will not help you to form good habits, nor will it alert you to bad ones.
Here’s a better question for your attending… “Dr. Advisor, can you take a moment to look over this H&P and tell me how I can make it better?“
You can do this with any particular area you want to improve in. Note writing, history taking, presenting patients, introducing yourself, signing out patients, running codes, etc. Whatever it is.
I just added more to the feedback portion to the RookieDoc Orientation Mastery Program to help you optimize your feedback – templates and scripts – exact phrases to try for yourself. You really need to form good habits now.
