Tips for Success in the Pediatric Clerkship

Know your schedule from day to day because the residents are not going to tell you every place you have to be. You should write down your schedule on index cards that you can keep in your pocket so that you know where you have to be and when you have to be there. Putting the schedule in your Palm would also be a good way to go.

Be proactive with the residents in attempting to learn the clinical skills and accomplish the goals and objectives.

If you know that you want to be a Pediatrician: Don't be nervous because you will not be able to perform at your best. How you do in the match does not depend upon your grade in the pediatrics clerkship. It depends upon fourth year, your overall third year grades and your extracurriculars. Residency programs do not use your grade in Pediatrics as a litmus test.

If you are considering Pediatrics as a career choice: Don't spend all of your time focusing on whether or not you enjoy every minute of the day. No specialty will stand up to that kind of scrutiny and you will miss the big picture. Rotations usually tell you what it is like to be an intern in a field and not what it is like to be an attending in a field.

If you know that you are not going into Pediatrics: Pay attention! No matter what specialty you go into, you will need to deal with kids at some point and this clerkship might be your only chance to really learn about the pediatric diseases. You cannot intuitively figure out the pediatric diseases based on the adult diseases, so you should look at the Pediatric Clerkship as your chance to learn about pediatric diseases in specific, and care of the young patient in general.

Third year is what you make of it, so be proactive. Even though it is intuitively correct to feel that you are a student and the job of the residents and attendings is to teach you, the reality of the situation is that you have to make sure that the residents and attendings teach you what you want to learn.

Always write summaries at the end of each progress and admission note. It is good practice for synthesizing the information and is equivalent to an oral "bullet" presentation of a patient.

There are two ways in which you find out how you are doing during the clerkship, feedback and evaluation. Feedback is meant to let you know what things you should work on and where you need to improve. If you are not receptive to feedback, then residents and attendings will stop giving it to you and you will not have a chance to improve. Doctors are not usually good at it because they are not specific about areas in which students are doing well or poorly. If you are not getting feedback, give the residents a copy of the feedback worksheet that can be found here.

You must log every patient that you take care of on the inpatient service and every patient that you see on your calls. A printable copy of the Pediatric Patient Log can be found here.

Seminars: Ask the presenters any questions that you have which are within their field of expertise. Ask them how they would do a differential in a certain patient or what they would think about in a given scenario. Don't let the presenter only get involved with one case. Your goal should be to learn three things from each presentation. One logistical point: Always call ahead on conference days to make sure that the conference hasn't been canceled or that the time or location hasn't been changed.

At the end of every week, take a look at the goals and objectives for the pediatric clerkship and the overall clerkship goals to see where you are in each one. If you are not sure how you are doing, ask the resident or intern for feedback on the goals and objectives. Pick at least three specific objectives to work on during the next week.

Use the orientation checklists as a means of understanding your role as a member of the health care team and the expectations that the interns, residents, and attendings have of you.