I never thought I would be writing a post about how to recover after receiving a negative clerkship evaluation. As medical students, more than likely you want to be received well. You want to do everything right and make no mistakes.
But, unfortunately, that is just not realistic. Especially when you are doing something that requires such fast learning and adaptability.
Clerkship evaluations are comments made by your preceptor that are included in your Medical Student Performance Evaluation, or, MSPE. Residency directors will be reviewing your MSPE to decide if there is a spot for you in their program. Therefore, these evaluations are important.
This is why it can seem so devastating to receive negative comments. There may be times where you try your hardest, but still don’t do everything quite right. It’s easy to become immediately defensive, discouraged, or feel like an absolute failure. But receiving negative comments and feedback is not the end of the road. In fact, it’s the very beginning. Continue reading to learn about how to bounce back after you receive negative feedback from your clerkship director.
Process their words
The first step in learning how to recover after receiving a negative clerkship evaluation is to process what was written about you. My school allows us to read our evaluations so we know what preceptors wrote. This amount of transparency is very valuable for students, so if your school doesn’t offer that, advocate for a way to know what is being written about you.
When I received my evaluation, I was immediately bummed. But I had to take a step back and understand where they were coming from. You are being evaluated by people whose livelihoods are those specialties. Even if you don’t like the specialty, you must put forth your best effort, because that area means a lot to those physicians. When you do something that does not show your love for that specialty as well, it can seem like a much bigger deal to those physicians because that’s their whole life.
So take their feedback with a grain of salt, because they will expect you to know things at a much higher level than what you feel is necessary. But also take from it the ways in which you can improve, and the skills that may be applicable to your desired specialty. Don’t below off their comments, but don’t become overly obsessive about them either, especially if you have no desire to do that specialty.
Work through your negative feelings
It’s natural to have negative feelings when someone says something about you that you don’t like. Don’t try to put on a brave face and act like you are not impacted by what a physician said about you. My evaluation contained comments about my work ethic and my ability to do what was asked of me. I felt very offended because I hang my hat on how hard I work. And I didn’t think the evaluation accurately reflected the low incidence of issues I had with that physician.
If you want to learn how to recover after receiving a negative clerkship evaluation, it’s best to work through your negative feelings instead of trying to suppress them. They linger longer if you ignore them. Identify your feelings. Are you sad? Angry? Disappointed? Embarrassed? Or even frustrated? If so, why do you feel those things? By finding the source of your negative feelings, you can begin to identify the areas you can improve, and the sources of disconnect between you and your physician.
Develop a new perspective
The next step in how to recover after receiving a negative clerkship evaluation is to develop a new perspective. Putting all the blame on your preceptor doesn’t do you any favors. You still have the negative evaluation and they still go on about their lives. It also puts you at risk for always putting the blame on others instead of taking accountability when necessary.
Medical students like to catastrophize everything. “This will RUIN me!” “I will never match into [insert specialty]”, “This is the worst thing ever!”. These all or nothing perspectives disregard the fact that we are learning. There is so much we still don’t know how to do, and sometimes those inadequacies will result in a negative evaluation. Sure, it’s frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world.
If you receive a negative evaluation, take ownership and acknowledge that medicine is a life-long learning process. You are going to make mistakes, receive negative reviews, and experience rejection for the rest of your life. Once you accept that, you learn how to work within that reality instead of against it. Tell yourself, “Okay, I didn’t do as much studying as I should have, and now I know how important that skill really is. The next rotation, I’m going to put forth more effort into the tedious aspects of the specialty so I don’t get dinged for that again.”
Come up with a plan to improve
Medical school admissions and residency program directors love a comeback story. They love people with resilience who can learn from their mistakes. This is because doctors make mistakes all the time. But the good physicians are the ones who learn from them and don’t continue making the same errors.
The positive thing about my situation is that my negative evaluation was my second rotation. This means that I literally have an entire year worth of rotations to receive better evaluations. One negative evaluation and 13 subsequent positive rotations will demonstrate my ability to bounce back from a mistake. It shows my willingness to learn from my errors and work on my weaknesses.
The best way to recover after receiving a negative clerkship evaluation is to come up with a plan to improve. Decide what your biggest weakness was in that clerkship, and address it in the next. Now, that doesn’t mean to let something else slip! You have to maintain the things you do well, while also improving those target areas.
Key Takeaways
Getting negative feedback sucks. But, it also provides you with the motivation to improve and do better. It’s easy to get complacent, and let the details slip by. But, if you want to continue being the best version of you, then that will require constant auditing of your strengths and weaknesses. The best audit is an evaluation that makes you aware of the areas on which you need to work. Don’t be discouraged and don’t think it’s the end of the world. Be proactive and make it your personal vendetta to bury that evaluation in a pile of positive words that make you stand out among the rest!
I really like this! 3rd year has been challenging in its own way and the subjectivity of it makes it so hard to feel as if you are doing enough. But we are bound to make mistakes and hopefully become great physicians in the future.
Darian is right about what is important to your preceptor/attending and what may not be important to you. I precept for family medicine/rural medicine/underserved populations. I had a student this year who I gave no below average responses for but did not give high marks. The student complained right away as their college offers transparency and they read the review before the last day was complete. The complaint was, almost exactly, “- but this will lose me my honors rating.” I thought, what immaturity and entitlement this person has. I wondered if they even belonged in medicine, and it cemented my feeling that this student cares nothing for the patients in front of them, but only for their own record. I felt I was going to be part of a system that had cranked out another surgeon who cherry picks pts to bolster their M and M numbers and bank account and leaves all the fallout and follow up to the FP when the procedure is over. You know the kind – barely speaks to the patient and never visits after the procedure is over, signing off the minute the pt is out of post op. “Call your primary for a follow up visit and to see about wound care and home health.” Gentleman surgeons are hard to find any more. I, luckily, know a few. But I digress. I had given the student, who has an interest in surgery, and apparently, a disregard for primary care, average marks on everything and a low average mark on completing assignments and professionalism. They had assumed because I do not yell or demand or treat students as if they are not adults, that the rotation was easy and no effort need be applied, nor assignments given, completed. I pointed out to them that I had assigned them a task, reminded them twice about it (shouldn’t have had to) and they never turned it in. I was respectful of the student’s time and safety during the rotation and had given a lot of extra free time for study and safe travel as weather was a factor. They responded to my pointing this out ” Oh I didn’t think you meant that.” What? Just because I am respectful of your safety and status in life and treat you like the adult you are, does not mean I am a push over or that I am not observing your fitness for clinical medicine and your professionalism as a future colleague. I have given of my time to this purpose because I love medicine and educating/mentoring others in understanding how humans work. This student was incurious, went through the motions and technical aspects of the rotations but made it plain from the beginning they were not interested in primary care. Not being interested in the specialty of primary care is ok. However, being a medical professional is finding a way to learn from each experience, respecting your colleagues and how they help your patients reach optimal health and how you fit into that ecosystem. Being a medical student is being open to knowledge that may help you going forward and helping all patients you come in contact with to reach their optimal health or correct diagnosis of their dis-ease. This is never done alone/only by you, the machinery of being human is too complex for any one person to get that credit. The medical community is small, whether you realize that or not. None of us can afford to alienate any of its members – you do not know where that may affect your later life – your future colleagues are educating you. Sometimes the smallest connections you did not notice when you are a student, affect your later opportunities. You will not be served well by turning up your nose at anyone or any learning opportunity. You can only see a far distant bright future by standing on the shoulders of giants. The gray hairs that are your preceptors now, were once the worst kind of scutmonkeys. My residency stories would raise your hair – with the hours and workload alone. Some of your preceptors will judge you on the reforms you enjoy, the discrimination you do not have to endure, and the hour restrictions you are afforded, alone, because they have similar experiences to mine. ALL of this is a learning experience. You get out of it what you put in. In the end, when MD is appended to your name, and you finish your residency and fellowship you are going to have to hang out your shingle and sink or swim in this ecosystem. Noone will really care where you were educated, what residency you went to, what your gpa was, whether you had honors. They will care whether you are competent and can get along and whether you have been sued. Patients do not sue doctors they perceived were trying, interested and personable. Learn how to work hard, be curious and hold hands. And when you fail to do that, have the grace to accept it when you are called on it. Then swallow, center, apologize if necessary, and ask the reviewer if you could get some honest feedback on how to do better. Hopefully, you will not be opening yourself up for abuse, but if that is what you get, report it to your dean if necessary, chalk it up to the world being unfair and move on with your life! One person’s opinion does not define your life. If that were so, I would not be in medicine today…but I may be here because I needed to prove that one opinion to be wrong.