ABSITE REVIEW

You are a medical student on your surgery rotation. Today, you wake up early in the morning, drive to the hospital, round on all of your patients in time, give a succinct presentation on each of your patients, have a great post-op plan in place, and successfully answered questions in the OR. Now your resident is online searching for a topic related to a consult. As you sit there, on call, you realize that you are very, very hungry but you’re afraid that asking to eat will have repercussions. This is exactly the situation Mike found himself in not too long ago.

Mike, a medical student, asked his resident if he could go for a quick bite while both were on call. The resident agreed and the student went off to eat. About 20 minutes later, the medical student arrived to a resident that was clearly unhappy with his food break. Now who made the mistake? The medical student for asking for food, or the resident for having an attitude after saying it was OK to go eat?

Medical students and residents by the nature of their work have different priorities. When deciding whether to eat or not to eat, a medical student should consider whether the team is having a “down time” or free time. If the surgery team is busy, it is not the right time to ask to go get food. Sometimes what is “down time” to the medical student may not be perceived that way by the resident.  In addition, medical students are under the constant cloud of evaluations. Asking to eat might make you look bad. Furthermore, each rotation, and for that matter each program, has a specific culture that medical students are expected to quickly learn.

What about the resident’s position? A resident will probably not say “no” if a medical student asks him or her to eat. Even if they don’t say no, they could generate a negative perception of the student if he or she asks to eat during a time when the resident himself cannot eat.

Are there then any general rules to help medical students navigate eating on a surgery rotation? Well, one answer is that you try to eat when the resident eats. Surgery is a team effort, and so is eating on your Surgery rotation.  Your first goal is to try to eat with the group.  If your residents appear extremely busy and you are hungry, why not offer to grab something for them to eat? That way you can get food, and the resident will be happy with you.  An offer like that might even buy you a free meal, as the resident will probably offer to pay for your food since most of them get food stipends.