 guys welcome back to the channel and another episode of the TMJ show in the Doc Talk series today we are talking to Tony all about how to stand out rotations how to get those honors and most importantly how to make yourself stand out for residency let's get into it all right guys welcome to the TMJ show today we have Tony Tony how's it going good good well so what's going on man uh how can we help but what do you have uh so I guess um my main concern is well I'm a second year med student uh I'm actually uh I went to school in the caribbean well I take I go to school in caribbean but because of COVID we're remote so currently on zoom uh my biggest uh question I guess and there's a lot of concerns with you know uh matching and whatnot um and facing these obstacles but how can I best set myself up when it comes to rotations and because I know connections are a big uh component to medicine um and I like I guess how would you recommend I stand out when it comes to you know uh rotating and working side by side with a potential residency system cool so how far are you away from starting rotations uh so I have to first take my step one and that's that's going to be here at the end of this year uh once I pass that then I'll go and begin my rotations I see and because of COVID is the way your rotations the way it's going to work is has that changed or is this still going to be at your local institution or how it's going to work out yeah so it's going to be just how it uh that has been I mean uh from what I heard at the beginning of this pandemic pandemic uh rotations were kind of limited but now I think it's back to normal yeah sounds good so essentially how do you make yourself stand out and like set yourself off for a good residency set so I go to like summarize it cool so usually you know I'm in a different position now because I actually get to like give people grades as an upper level resident um as I'm making this video um so I can give a little bit of insight of what I what I personally um do differently what I tell the students that I work with and it seems to work even when they go to other rotations is on day one of every rotation make sure you sit with the people or find the people uh whether it's through email or personal interactions and ask them their personal expectations because that way you know you kind of have a foundation of how they'll grade you ideally you're being great on a root break but no one really goes off the root break everyone kind of has a personal idea of who is an honor student who gets that a and who is like an average student um so they'll tell you what they to be considered to be the most important so like that first day or two to get those expectations um and just being very honest of asking you're asking them of what they're kind of hierarchy of things that they care about some people just want you to work really hard to get really better that's kind of like my personal platforms I'll tell my students that some people really do have an expectation like I want you to you know be able to manage x y and z problems by the end of the rotation and doing it well doing it independently and doing it without the other residents helping you out that just tells you like what you need to be at on the last week last two weeks of that rotation it gives you a goal to reach for once you get those expectations honestly write those down when you come home those that that first day say my upper-level resident my attending gave me these expectations to go about and then ask yourself what type of things you'll do to really kind of hit all of those because you know they've told you that this is important ideally if you focus on those the time that you're working with them they start to see examples where you're starting to echo their expectations so that's where the beauty of that comes from and then you know every kind of week or I would say like every 25% of working with them so imagine if you're working with them for four weeks and it would be every week but if you're only working with them for two weeks and be like halfway through each week just ask them like how they think you're doing what feedback they would give you ideally they're giving you like micro feedbacks is what we call it on rotations and awards where I'm telling you how you're doing on your presentations I'm telling you how you're doing with your patient interactions how you're doing with your clinical knowledge but have like a quick like two-minute session with them and just saying what you can do differently what they would want you to do better and again come home ask yourself how you're meeting those expectations so that's a nice framework of saying you know here is how I impress without sucking up it's more of like here's what I think I need to do now assess midway assess again assess again ideally each time you're making that progress to that final expectation they have awesome and it's not weird to just flat out come and ask and be like hey what's what is it that you expected me no absolutely not I recommend it if they don't it's actually expected that your person that's evaluating you is going to come to you and tell you what they want to do but it depends on who the attending is you know I've been in experiences where they haven't told me anything and I kind of just did what I thought I was supposed to do sometimes it worked out but sometimes it didn't and so even as a maybe awkward you know it's like hey can we you know especially on the first day it's where it's the least awkward because everything is awkward on the first day I'm saying hey is it okay if we take a second to talk about expectations for the rotation that's a perfect way of saying it you know nobody would take offense to that obviously do it at a time where it's appropriate so if they're everyone's busy on your surgery rotation try to find the best time to do it and setting an email on the first day is also appropriate too you know this is a good way without looking gunner-ish of saying like my main goal is to do as best I can on this rotation so what are your expectations for us um so that's a good framework of starting it um and there's no shame in asking that question it's recommended awesome it sounds great all right before we get back to the interview if you're enjoying this conversation with tony go ahead if you're watching this on youtube to hit that like button down below truly supports the channel if you're enjoying the style of watching somebody on their medical journey get help step by step on their medical journey and wish you could have somebody in your corner do the same then consider joining me in the medallinic academy where I do exactly that for all our members twice a month and join you on lifetime group coaching plus all of the courses that we've created over the past six years so if you just want to check the medallinic academy go ahead and link down below but let's get back to the interview a follow-up question would be um and I know I'm kind of getting ahead of myself but I just I've always been the person to kind of work 10 steps or I'd want to know 10 steps ahead just so I could avoid as many mistakes as possible sure and the question is when it comes to residency and matching how does your preclinical performance play into that I would say less and less as I've experienced more and more helping people go through the match and doing it myself obviously it you know if your institution did you get graded that shows up on a transcript or anything for your first two years so to be honest with you I don't know the final transcript I hear that it is pass fail at the end currently we have a grade like it's a percentage but um yeah as long as you know so it's a little bit up in the air I mean even if you had a grade you know if the grade was there and maybe a data point that residencies could use but more you'll find that there's really kind of a subcategory of things that people look at board exams is going to be one for sure so you're still in the situation where step one will still count um and somebody somebody watching this who's like a first year med student at this moment step one may not and so step two ck is probably going to count more and honestly even in your shoes um step two ck may start to be a focus by the time you're applying to residency um for residency institutions they may start looking at that more as just a practice um year for you know a year later when they're not going to have that score to really rely on so board exams is going to be one fit um your clinical performance so your honors high pass whatever grades that you got on your rotations is going to be a big one um your recommendation letters is going to be kind of a third category and then the fourth category is really whatever is to make you interesting um and by that I mean research experience if you're applying for you know a research heavy specialty dermatology plastic surgery um or at a residency that values that um or extracurriculars I really kind of highlight that this is what I'm interested in and here are experiences that indicated that I've explored it um but none of those four categories mentioning your pre-clinical grades your pre-clinical years are really the foundation to help you do well on your step one to help you do well on your rotations um but honestly I don't remember my grades how to sell bio or biochem or whatnot um and that's that's for a lesson for a different story um but there you should think of them as foundational years where you've really focused on making sure you gather as much as possible to make your rotations more valuable so in essence the pre-clinical the pre-clinical years are there just to serve you to kind of build the foundation for the the stuff that actually will exactly yeah I think over the years we'll find that more and more schools will start to make their first two years pass fail my institution did that when I started and I'm seeing more and more examples of it so I think residencies um are realizing that that's less data point that they can use and honestly it's not the most correlative of how good of a you know a future doctor you are it doesn't matter if you did amazing during your first two years if you take can't take of a hair of a patient then you can't take care of a patient um clinical knowledge that's stuck in your head is useless um so I think they've kind of realized that and so if it's there they may look at it um but I don't think that's that's the highlight of your application so it's not where your focus should be awesome well that's that's honestly um that's all I had cool I mean as far as like burning questions sure I mean I I think one other thing I like to give to you and anyone going into rotations because we're at that part of the year where you know rotations are going to start people for like you know June or July after they take their step one I know you're not the only one stressed about like how do I do well um how do I make sure that my first rotation is in like a a fluke or like a a practice you know a test drive you want that one to be as great as possible to you um it obviously depends on the rotation so the advice of getting the expectations is really important um but one thing I tell my students that work with me is that really the best examples of how you can do well without necessarily clinically standing out is having your patients really vouch for you independently um and the best way to do that is obviously see them in the morning when you pre-round see them with your team and then see them in the afternoon you find that it's less common for students to see their patients again after they're done rounding they think their responsibility with them is kind of over but if your patient can say like oh I know Tony is my student or I know he's one of my care providers and they start to look at you more than they look at their attendings more they look at their residents um and if you can start leading conversations and asking how they're doing and they have a good rapport there's something about that which you can't really like label into a rubric but everyone just realizes that you're freaking good at interacting with your patients your patients love you and if you had average knowledge and average patient rapport then you're going to get an average score but I do think that there is something to say about when you have you know average knowledge that's growing over time so there is that little bit of an asterisk where you show signs of progress um but you have you know amazing patient rapport just because you spend so much time repeating your interactions with your patients um those show up on your evaluations those may lead you going from like a a pass or a high pass to an honor student I've had that happen to me um and I see the the most growth from the students that I work with when they take that advice to heart so if you see your patients multiple times and you focus on building that rapport without any intention of like hoping they speak on your behalf you're going to have those patients who are going to say like Tony was a great or like Dr Tony they're going to think that you're one of the physicians on the team just because you see they see you so much um and people don't realize that like I only see my patients probably once or twice a day being you know taking care of 10 to 12 but if you only have two to three you can see them multiple times a day you know if you did something you're on your neurology rotation you're on your medicine rotation you did something in terms of their management plan in the morning then you can say okay let me go check on them in the afternoon to see if what we did in the morning is like helping you know if they were nauseous we started new medication are they still nauseous they were constipated as small as that is like as they have they had a bowel movement in the afternoon you can report back to your residents so one they know you're taking initiative two of your patients know you care for them and some it just starts to feed in themselves you also become the one invested in your patients care because they'll tell you small things that they didn't get a chance to tell you during rounds and then you start to look like you're taking care of your patients because you'll be like oh the third time i've seen my patient today they're complaining of some pain here i like to start this for them i mean your resume is like sure like sounds great i don't see why not but that doesn't happen if you only see them twice because usually you wake your patient up at six o'clock they don't want to see you and then you see them at like nine or ten o'clock with your your team and they see so many people that they can't focus on you so if you want that attention on yourself for your evaluations the best way to do it is to you know practice providing attention to your patients and sometimes they'll just like start to report back and i can't count how many times that's happened to me without the intention of like i hope this patient speaks on my behalf if you just do it because you want to be a good better doctor it starts to move the needle of like where your grade goes from does that make sense yeah that's great i didn't even think that was um possibility yeah um take advantage of any initiative you could have with your patients and without looking forceful so that doesn't mean like you're trying to force your residents to like focus like hey i'm focusing on my patients pay attention to me doing that no just like you know i would have a student who i worked with recently who i thought honestly from the start it would be a high pass student they were quiet they knew some stuff they did okay with their patients but every single day i gave him that tip and he would go see his patients and sometimes in the afternoon he'd be gone i thought he went to a restroom and he'd come back and say hey i've seen x y and z and this person told me this this person is doing better and this person actually looks worse maybe we should do you know this for them and that was great to know um that experience was great i already started to think of that student highly and their clinical knowledge may not have been different than their peers um but they started to just independently get better because they were invested in taking care of the problem that was ahead of them they looked up how to fix it and they recommended the change but that wouldn't have happened if they just stuck to the generic pre-round round and then like study the rest of the day kind of thing well that makes sense yeah hopefully that helps you out um hopefully that helps everyone else listening out um but any other questions tony no i no thank you so much sounds great man well thanks so much for watching i appreciate the support and i'm glad that we could do this call an interview um best of luck on your rotations best of luck on step one um and let us know you know or let me know how things are going i'll put your uh instagram or social media stuff down in case people want to follow your journey as well sounds great thank you so much all right man have a great day you too see you later bye all right guys hopefully you guys enjoy this conversation with tony set it down to earth human being and know he's going to be a great doctor and definitely make his family and his parents proud so tony if you're listening and watching this thank you so much for joining us in an interview if you want to show your support for tony on his journey go ahead and drop some good vibes in the comments down below i'm sure you'll see them and also you can check out his instagram handle which i'll link down below in the description and just like i mentioned in the episode if you want more guidance and somebody to be in your corner throughout your medical journey whether it be your pre-med medical school or residency years learning how to do things like how to study better manage your time more efficiently finally have the time to do the things that matter to you more as well as preparing for important exams like step one step two and obviously matching into your number one residency choice if all that seems like i wish somebody could guide me and check out the medallin academy down below because again not only do i work with all our members twice a month in group coaching sessions just like what we're doing here but also you get access to all the courses that we made in the past you could check out some of the reviews our students have gotten as well as all the courses that i create in the future so if you're at all interested go ahead and check out the link down below whether it be on youtube or on the podcast and on that note if you're watching this on youtube and you're watching it this far that means you probably got some value from our conversation with tony so go ahead and hit that like button down below let me know in the comment section what you learned what other questions you may have for similar situations as tony and go ahead and hit that subscribe button while you're down there and if you're listening to this on a podcast regardless of what your favorite platform may be consider living in honor for you on itunes to make sure this podcast gets in front of more and more people that may really need it but with that being said guys thank you so much for watching as always if you enjoyed this then you can check out all of the rest of our doc talk series the episodes that we've done so far here and you can also check out my full walkthrough of anki right here which i'm sure you guys will love but thank you so much for being a part of my journey i'll see you guys in next one peace