I had the same site evaluator for this rotation as I did for my last, which made things easier because I knew what to expect. Again, it was a one-on-one format for my evaluations which I liked as it provided me with more individualized attention, gave me a little more time to present cases, and ask questions. I have struggled with my pharm cards in the past, mostly because I like to write down everything possible, but once I get to the sixth adverse effect my mind tends to draw a blank. I took a slightly different approach at the suggestion of my evaluator and wrote down the top 5 for everything and tried to weigh my indications and dosing toward what I had seen the drug used for during my rotation. Just changing those couple of things made it much easier for me to remember the entirety of the card as well as apply it to my own clinical knowledge because I had seen the medication used in practice.

I am still working on my assessment, as I tend to make it more verbose than my site evaluator would prefer. For me, and from what I saw during my emergency medicine rotation, the assessment should contain some justification or thought process (objectively of course) of how you reached a particular diagnosis, or not. It is still difficult for me to make that happen in one line, but I’m working on it!

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license.