Slacker Stories and How You Can Get Away With More Than You Think
Radiology rotations at my school were known for being extremely laid-back. With that in mind, most students at my school took a radiology elective at some point during their senior year.
Not to pass up on the good times (who really wants to be doing a SICU rotation instead of a radiology elective, anyway?), I promptly scheduled myself for a general radiology rotation about midway through my fourth year. Here was my schedule:
Day 1: Hung out with residents and got a read of just how much I could get away with.
Monday-Friday: Came into the hospital around 10:00 am, signed a paper to validate that I was present, left the hospital at 10:15 am and went back home.
Saturday-Sunday: Off.
Repeat for four weeks.
Seriously, that was my rotation.
Am I competent to read films? Nope.
Do I care? Not at all.
I had no plans to even practice medicine, much less read a damn radiology study. I thought “why not make the most of this rotation?” And that’s exactly what I did.
How You Can Get Away With More Than You Think
I was supposed to be hanging out with the radiology residents from around 8am-5pm Monday-Friday. That’s what the other students did, anyway. What most students don’t realize is that you can get away with far more than you think you can on rotations. Of course, it’s rotation-specific. For example, I couldn’t have done this on Surgery or IM. You have to just read the residents.
I saw on day one that there were quite a few students rotating with me and that the residents and attendings weren’t keeping detailed logs of attendance. The only attendance log was one that stayed up for the entire week that I signed myself. That’s an early Christmas present for you because it essentially means that nobody really knows who you are or where you’re supposed to be. This was all I really needed in order to pull the schedule out of my ass for the month.
For evaluations, I simply picked a few random residents that were on the service. They didn’t know who I was anyway, so they just filled out the evaluation and gave me pretty good comments.
My final grade on the rotation: A
The key is to simply keep your ear to the ground always looking for opportunities to exploit. Just like in business, you need to find market inefficiencies and then take advantage of those inefficiencies in order to create a profit.
Do You Have Any “Slacker” Stories?
It’d be cool to hear about any slacker stories that you guys may have while on rotations. Perhaps you “beat the system” and got a little payback for the long hours and abuse you had to put up with during your third year. If so, I’d love to hear about it.
Its pretty surprising how lax some of the rotations can be. Im a first year, and I;d be interested in hearing the
stuff you did first and second year. Any insights?
Wow; must have been hell!
What do y’all think of radiology? It doesn’t seem as bad as the other specialties.
Einthoven:
First and second year I pretty much made my own schedule, only showing up for exams. Our classes weren’t “required” as long as we passed exams and courses.
Greg:
I’m no radiology resident, but from what I gather from my radiology residency friends, it’s a decent specialty. Some concerns they’ve voiced are:
1. Call sucks, even as upper level radiology residents.
2. Outsourcing of film reads overseas.
3. Loss of radiology procedures to other specialties, i.e. vascular surgery doing their own arteriograms.
let’s see…during third year I flew to the caribbean for a week with friends during an anesthesia rotation. I called in sick over some really bad scratchy internet phone line to say I wouldn’t be coming in for our scheduled weekly meeting. Got credit for the rotation– no one even realized I was gone. I highly recommend anesthesia as a great dodge out rotation!
Find out from past students about the rotations at different hospitals. We had a choice of picking several hospitals, and from past student reviews, I picked a laid back hospital. It isn’t glamorous, but they give me housing at the hospital. So, anytime you are done with patients, you can just go home. A lot of my friends picked a hospital just because it is in the city. Big mistake. Take a car with you and drive over to the city on the weekends…your friends won’t have weekends. Trust me. I made lots of non-medical friends just so I have someone to hang with on my weekends.
Also, try to become very good friends with the residents. If they like you, they won’t make you come in on weekend call and won’t make you stay for short call…I am on call today and I am in the comfort of my own home. Surgery is hell no matter what you do or where you go. But, try to pick a hospital with night float.
Basically, ask past students!!! It may be a bit of a hassle to find out but trust me, it is worth it. I pretty much have every weekend off and go out all the time. Good luck
oh, btw, I am on call today : )
Half of my surgery rotation was at a VA hospital where we were not issued pagers (its the VA, they werent shelling out the money). Therefore, once you were released from your resident, they could never find you again. Call was something like Q6-8.
I was on call on a Sunday. Went in for morning rounds, then separated from the team. No pager, no way to reach me. I did some reading for the Surgery SHELF exam. Watched a baseball game on one of the TVs in the hospital. Left the hospital and went to a movie (The Crocodile Hunter movie). Went out to eat dinner. Came back to the hospital, went to the call room, went to sleep. Woke up after a full night sleep, pre-rounded, then did rounds with the team. After rounds, the chief says “Who was on call last night?” I raised my hand. “OK, you can go home now.” SWEET!
Hey Hoover,
any advice on preventive medicine or medical genetics
wow, i met a resident on the interview trail with a 70 holy priest on greymane. love your blog. i agree 98% with everything. update soon.
When I took pediatrics I certainly came in early every morning so that I could pre-round my patient, but I was gone the moment rounds were over at 10:30. I did no consults, little call, no floor work, and did as little responsibility as possible. During my end-of-the-rotation evaluation with our attending, he asked if I was going into pediatrics. I told him no. He replied, “Wow, most people who don’t want to go into pediatrics blow off this rotation. But I’ve been real proud with how hard you’ve worked over the past few weeks.”
Nice guys, keep ‘em coming. Way to stick it to the man.
Radiology at my school was equally easy. You had to go to morning lectures most days around 7:30. There were sometimes lectures at noon. Other than that, noone cared what you did. A friend of mine skipped something like 4 days completely and honored the rotation.
Likewise anesthesia. Come to morning lecture, sign in with resident of the day, do whatever. You were not monitored at all. In at 6:00, out by 7:00.
Oh yes, those were the days.
I took a “Radi-Holiday” rotation my 4th year as well.
I also took a “Radi-Holiday” elective not once, but twice during my residency.
I didn’t take it quite as far as you did however as I was actually rather interested in the subject matter, so I actually did spend some time with the radiologists looking at films as stuff.
Still, overall, a much more laid back experience than most other rotations.
Sometimes I kick myself for not going into radiology as a specialty!
(Nice website by the way. I’ve just recently started my own. I’d love for you to take it for a quick spin and give me some feedback, etc. since I’m a total Noob with this stuff..)
Cheers,
Sam
I did a “research” month my fourth year. I didn’t step foot in the city until the end of week 3. I felt a little bad for having done nothing the entire month, so I went in one day and did some reading on my “project.” Then I got tired of reading and took the rest of the month off. Got “Honors”.
This is hilarious. I am a second year and only go to class when it’s mandatory. I’ve been kind of dreading having to get up early and wear professional dress. It’s good to see some light rotations!
On my IM rotation, we had to take call. Nothing sucks more than working up new patients with a full H&P at 2 AM. I learned pretty early that the on call residents were capped at a certain number of patients per day. About one hour into call, I’d call the ER from a hall phone and tell a secretary or student nurse that the IM service was “capped” and that all the new admits should go to the hospitalist team. The rest of the day, I’d go get some dinner and watch DVDs on my laptop.