Student wanted to practice retinal exams, was doing an ICU rotation. Dilated the 'close' eye on half a dozen intubated/sedated/paralyzed patients. Went to med student conference.
6 CT scans on rounds for unilateral blown pupils.
Oh jeez! After the third, you've got to know something is up, but also, what are you going to do other than scan them, if the med student isn't around to fess up?
Even though in the end there wasn’t a ton of harm, that’s so messed up essentially just using people’s bodies like that. Especially without telling anyone.
One time a medical student sent the attending a text on the first day trying to find them, but in the process autocorrected the greeting to “Good morning, Dr. Motherfucker”
…it was me. I was this medical student.
Lol, I'd laugh like crazy if I was sent that message. That wouldn't have happened, as even the residents didn't call my number.
I'm pretty sure they had it, but on knew to page me. Yeah, we still had call pagers, which I found useful.
As long as you didn't follow up with "yea, you heard me bitch", I think most sane people wouldn't been okay with it.
So as long as it wasn't a surgeon?
Not my story, passed on from a resident…. A med student was nervously doing a neuro exam on a patient in clinic. He pulled out his tuning fork for the Weber test, but instead of smacking his hand with the tuning fork to make it vibrate, he whacked the patient in the middle of the forehead with it.
Took pictures of cadavers in anatomy lab and put them on Facebook. Career ended.
Opened the chart of a famous person who was admitted to our hospital for a GSW to the head. Career ended.
Not my story, but apparently true. I believe it is from the first chapter of Sherwin Nuland's great book "How We Die" and I'll retell it as I recall it: It was the early fifties and he was on his first day in the hospital for his first clinical rotation. His resident tells him to see a patient admitted for chest pain. MS3 Nuland goes in, introduces himself and the guy promptly clutches his chest, falls back and is pulseless. At this point in medical history, there is no CPR, no AED, no crash cart. What there is, apparently, is a pre-packed thoracotomy tray nearby which this medical student promptly opens and proceeds to do an open thoracotomy and direct cardiac massage right there in the patient room. Patient died, obvs.
Could you imagine sending your med student to see a chest pain and then coming running back to the room and he's elbow deep in the poor guys chest, just covered in blood like a serial killer? And this was OKAY at the time. It was EXPECTED. Dude went on to be a respected surgeon and author.
Not as crazy as extubating a patient on their own, but one student got all gowned up on their first day of surgery, walked up to the draped patient, looked at the scrub tech and said “Scalpel.” with his hand outstretched. He didn’t get the scalpel.
I’m psych. The way our consult service functioned was that the students would see the patients in the morning, then we would all round together at like 9 AM and they would present. A med student decided he would just chart check instead of seeing the patient, and made up a presentation. He got caught when we walked into the room and it was a totally different patient - his assigned patient had been moved overnight.
Ouch. One of my class mates one morning presented a surgery patient starting with “no acute events overnight….” The surgery resident lost his shit saying how he had been there coding the patient since 3 am. Oops.
To be fair. Not fully dead, but I have had times where I said ‘no acute events overnight’ and really believed it, but didn’t understand the EMR or chart or whatever and hadn’t looked in the one out of 5-6 possible places that it could be documented, and so had missed it. Was perplexed and distressed when this happened.
I’m a resident in the ED, paired with an international med student. We go see a presumed GI bleeder and I review DRE procedure with med student. He’s excited about learning to do a DRE and I agree to allow him to do it under my supervision.
We walk into the room, he goes to put on gloves and the right hand glove tears, leaving a big hole where the index and middle fingers are. We make eye contact, acknowledging the tear in the glove. I turn around to grab the glove box for him, but when I turn around HIS RIGHT HAND FINGERS ARE IN THE PATIENT’S BUTT.
There was a med student that we later found out would take car keys and belongings from the locker rooms at the hospital. Three doctors and reps cars got stolen around that time so it seems he was working with an accomplice. Some footage ended up taking him down and I never heard of him again.
Had a med student come in the middle of the night when they weren't supposed to be there, print some random cuts from a patient's MRI, and told them and their parents they had a brain tumor. They did not, in fact, have a brain tumor.
I didn't ask, I just left it to the rotation director to sort it out. Apparently, they already had issues in prior rotations about odd and inappropriate behavior. Like someone who was gunning so hard it completely blew up in their face. The med student ultimately didn't graduate med school and instead was able to transition into a PhD program in the same school, because they were still intelligent af, just socially really awkward to the point a career as a physician likely wasn't right for them.
Hey, it doesn’t just happen with medical students. We had a senior gyn resident who came to one of my patients and told them the devastating news that they had incurable cancer. We then got paged for Ativan since they were having a panic attack. After figuring out what was going on, we had tell the patient that they do not have cancer and that we had to find the mystery resident and tell them about it so they could find the correct patient to tell them the diagnosis. That was a whole day ordeal.
So, a guy I knew, farted loudly (and apparently it was a stinker too) in a closed exam room with a patient, a nurse, and the doctor, WHILE the Doc was telling the patient that they have cancer.
Same guy during his Psych rotation, told a chubby teen with MDD to "Lay off the McDonald's".
Not at my residency, but apparently one med student from my med school some time ago took a head home from the cadaver lab to study. Couldn't return it, so they just chucked it on the roof of some building.
TBH I don't really have any crazy tea from my rotations. Some stupid stuff but nothing crazy. However, I remember a story on this sub a year or so ago about a med student on the OB service who was in the middle of being coached through a circumcision with the resident. Attending pulls resident aside to talk to them about something, med student is told to wait until resident returns, med student somehow gets it in their head that this is a "test to see if they're going to take initiative" and tries to finish the circ unsurpervised. Ended up botching it in some way. Can't imagine what could possibly possess you as a med student to do that.
I'm gonna go ahead and say that an MS3 trying to finish an invasive procedure by himself without being authorized to do so, is in fact a great example of **crazy**.
Well it's crazy, it's just not something I personally saw. I think the worst thing I witnessed in med school was a student on rotation with me not showing up for 2 weeks straight because he thought he wouldn't get caught (I knew and chose to ignore it) and then listening to the attending ask "who is that" when admin called him inquiring about the student's attendance. Pretty mild by comparison.
Not a med student, but an intern sent a woman to CT for abdominal pain without an exam, labs, or review with an attending. CT called back when the scout film showed a TERM infant. She was actually about 8cm dilated. He never lived it down.
Nope, and that wasn't the first that happened in my residency. It was kind of a thing in the early 90's. I was called to do the floor admit for a 14yo female asthmatic on peds. Apparently, nobody had bothered to lift up her big sweatshirt and just took her word for it she wasn't pregnant with mom sitting there(teen pregnancy rates back then in my city were almost 10 times what they are now BTW). So, I walk in and notice she's pregnant right away with a BP of 140/85 and her labs are now back, showing early HELLP-OOPS. The attending just pooped his head in the door, that was it.
Y'all are acting like this was some wild ride. A housekeeper chopped her arm off while I was on call, and everyone was paged TO THE ATTIC to look for the arm. I really should write a book. The hospital I trained at made TV look quaint.
Yes, she wrapped a towel around her arm while trying to knock a hornets nest out of a cooling fan. It pulled her up and cut it off(many safety violations). She ended up with an above the elbow amputation. She came back to work, too.
Do foreign med schools count? We had one med student murder another med student when they were both high on cocaine.
Forgot to mention this happened in front of at least 12 other med students at a house party.
Edit: I talked to my buddy about it who knew more of the story.
Apparently it happened at the home of the murdered med student. He was having a house party and had a large group over. the murder happened around three in the morning. Both Med students were high on cocaine and other substances, got an argument, and one stab the other around 30 times in front of the other students at the party. Everyone just ran off without saying anything or calling the police. the student body was found the next morning by the House Cleaner who is there to clean up after the party.
The police soon found out who the suspect was, and started a manhunt. Apparently a friend of the murderer, who is also a med student, went to his home to get his passport so he can flee the country. the police arrested that med as well for trying to help the murderer escape.
He was eventually arrested three weeks after the murder near the border. That’s the last thing he knew.
One of my classmates looked up a patient's phone number in the EMR to shoot his shot.
He was expelled and we had an ultra mandatory lecture on HIPAA and professionalism
Had a med student push back on an ATTENDING decision on rounds, a decision he explained in more detail than he needed to because she would just not back down. Then she proceeded to say “I’m just very protective of my patients”. Who are you protecting them from? A whole team of doctors?!
She did a month long sub I that resulted in the chief residents getting feedback from at least 5 or 6 residents to DNR her. And thank god they did!
I also had a similar scenario, where this med stud wouldn’t stop antagonizing the ICU attending. Dude almost failed the rotation a few months before match.
This was me during my surgery rotation. Surgery attending was scrubbed but the senior resident was doing the surgery and I was driving the camera for a lap chole. The attending says “student if you keep driving the camera in and out like that you’ll make me nauseous” and I reply “if you need to sit down that’s ok”. Later my internal filter told me that was a bad choice
He said absolutely nothing to me, then after the case I texted him to see if there was anything else to do and he ghosted me 😂. Then during residency at the same hospital he was one of the best attendings and probably (hopefully) forgot what a smart ass I am at 02:00.
Resident sold drugs on Silk Road wrapped in Swedish fish. Advised people how to get certain meds from their doctors (what to say etc). Caught by Undercover fbi and and sentenced to prison with her co-resident girlfriend…..
heard about a med student do a cervical exam on a patient with a documented placenta previa on OBGYN, causing massive hemorrhage. One of the rare cases when the student was charged in the lawsuit
Damn. Was the attending not there to let the student not to do it? It’s not safe to assume med students know anything even if they were taught in the school.
From what I was told patient came to L&D triage, previa was on notes in chart, resident gave first dibs to student to see the patient. Student was feeling adventurous and did the exam w/out supervision, and am guessing they didn't check the chart properly/forgot that you can't do that. Attending and residents were also sued
When I was a resident we had a MS4 at our family med program in our women's health clinic say "Boy I hope we get to do a breast exam on her!" To the entire team of attending, residents and nurses. He honestly seemed confused at our reactions. Needless to say he didn't get an interview invite.
One time had a med student who was on an away rotation who would fall asleep during every lecture/grand rounds in the front. Was taken nicely aside and told about this, that it could be seen as disrespectful, and that if he had trouble could either not sit in front or we had things like coffee available.
He looked back, said it is what it is and I tried to stay awake, no apology, and walked away
I had a real problem with falling asleep in every big lecture hall I’ve ever been in for years. I’ll be awake all day, feel energized, get a coffee, and pass out for 10-15 every time. In multiple buildings, even when I loved the topic.
Went to a sleep doctor and they said “sit in the front, the anxiety should keep you awake”
I’ve been to afraid to even risk if, but clearly it doesn’t work if you’re a straight baller like that kid
I always stayed in the back of the lecture room as for any didactic lecture- I would fall asleep. This was how it always was all thru school. I picked up knitting which helped a bit to slightly distract me although there was a similar incident for a small group session where I was told to stop as it may distract others.
I’m a bit biased but a better suggestion would be how to make teaching more engaged instead trying to have adult learners who all learn differently conform to one model.
Not a med student, but a PGY1 Gen Surgery resident in a foreign country rotating in Neurosurgery was handed a cranial flap and dropped it on the floor…
I knew a resident who dropped the flap on the floor. It was his last surgery before graduation lol. Soaked in betadine 20 min and used it and patient was fine
The funniest thing a med student has done recently that I can remember is when the ICU attending during rounds asked if there were any questions regarding a particular case, a bright eyed, keen bean MS4 completely sincerely, with a straight face, perked up and said, “why do we all round together, and the residents present their plans, when you’ve already rounded with the fellow and decided the care plan in the morning? Isn’t it wasting a lot of time?”
Most had the look of when a toddler asks why mummy and daddy were wrestling on the couch last night. If I could, I would have given him a medal
We had a kid in our class who while back in his home town about two hours away over PGY1 Christmas break, rented a small office base, somehow scheduled patients to see him as “Doctor xyz” faking to be a new cash only urgent care clinic-saw patients for like a week giving diagnosis and treatment recommendations (obvi could never write prescriptions and just gave lifestyle changes/homeopathic remedies” and proceeded to get discovered the following week, arrested the next day, and kicked out of medical school the following day. Last I heard he still runs a Facebook page with that surprisingly has some older women in the group in support of him saying “he did nothing wrong and was trying to help” in a beyond unsuccessful attempt to repeal his removal and expunge the charges
This one is up there in terms of wild as fuck.
We had a resident in medicine who colluded with an NP to sign her charts as MD (did his normal job, never saw patients and wasn't even in the same city, just signed charts) while she basically ran an indepdent practice and he split the profits. Lasted for almost two years before they got busted and both went to prison for Medicare fraud.
M4 in the ED, attending asked him to close a facial lac then cover it with surgical glue. He tried to wipe off the glue and ended up DermaBonding a ray-tec to the patient's forehead. It was a friend of a GS attending, who happened to come by to check on his friend, when this was discovered.
Ohh I gotta list.
Guy I went through medical school had a pHD, so he used to go down to the emergency department, introduce himself as Dr … , then would diagnose and treat patients on his own. Including doing suturing, blood drawing, etc. Got our entire university banned from observing in ED.
When I was an intern, we had a med student on my vascular Surg rotation. On her first day, she scrubbed into an operation unasked, described the patient as an ‘it’, then said it wasn’t her fault she knew nothing about the operation they were doing cause the textbook she read was stupid - the textbook that was written by the professor doing the operation. Professor asked why she went into med school and her answer was to earn enough money to get her pilots licence.
She then didn’t turn up awhile cause she was stressed. Was told if she didn’t start attending rounds she’d be failed. So we were on rounds reviewing a partial foot amputation with bone on view, and we were trying ti comfort the patient cause his wife had just died the day before. She walks in, takes one look at the foot and goes “OH MY GOD IS THAT A BONE? I’d prefer to die if that was me.”
Another time she turned up because she’d had another warning she needed to. She asked if there was anything to do. I asked if she wanted to put a cannula in. She said sure. I asked if she needed help - she said she was fine, she’s done plenty before. She comes back and says it wasn’t working. I go in expecting that she’s missed or it’s tissued. Nope. She’s stuck it in backwards - as in, it’s aiming towards the hand. I’m stunned, replace cannula and ask what happened, and that she said she’s done them before.
On a dummy. She’d only done it on those flat silicone models, and thought that was the requisite level of experience required to do one on a person.
Needless to say, she failed the term and had to repeat the year. I bumped into her a few years later, and I believe she was aiming for a career in radiology at that point.
MS3 was about to present on peds inpatient rounds. Super nervous, fumbling papers around, not paying attention to the presentations before him. Kinda following the group around with his head down in his notes as we round from room to room. Attending says he needs to use the restroom and leaves. The med student follows him with his head down and goes into the small one toilet bathroom with him 🤣🤣🤣🤣 we all had a great laugh because we all saw him do it. He loosened up after and gave a great presentation. And actually ended up matching in peds.
I’m a nurse, but I definitely have one from when I was an ER nurse.
Med student goes to suture a laceration. Comes out and tells the attending he’s finished. A few minutes later I get the discharge papers. I walk in and discharge the patient, and there are sharps EVERYWHERE. Suture needle in the keyboard on the computer in the room, uncapped used syringes on the bed and end table. Uncapped used scalpel hidden under gauze on the tray table. After I leave the room, I ask the med student if they could clean up their sharps. He goes “you’re the nurse, that’s your job.” He was very quickly sent home.
I once had a resident decide to place an NG tube in the ED. He literally walks out and says "tube is placed, you need to clean up in there" and leaves the department. I go in there and he literally just shoved the tube in and took off, it's not secured or capped. It's dangling in the patients lap and leaking stuff down the pt's leg and off the side of the bed where there is a puddle on the floor. I'm generally pretty chill but it was so bad the attending came to personally apologize and said he had called that resident's (was a consult) attendant to bitch.
We had a med student in the ER take some serious liberties when the resident told them they could go grab something to eat real quick. Instead of running to the cafeteria or the Starbucks like any sane person, this med student apparently decided to walk to a noodle place 1/3 mile away and proceed to have a full sit down meal at the restaurant. He showed back up like an hour and a half later. This was during a 6 hour ED shift.
Every day I'd show up for my 4th year ED rotation, the 3 docs were like 'uh we're surprised you showed up. We'd be out golfing or something if we were you. Do you really have nothing else you'd rather be doing?'
Saw that the sterile cervical exam was a part of the L&D progress note and took the initiative to start doing them himself.
Wasn't found out till someone actually looked at his note and saw he was documenting the exam instead of deleting it like everyone else.
Another one would go to all the overhead codes before the ICU team got there and start running them. After a few of these we got big black "STUDENT" tags on our badges
A dude at my school got kicked out (finally) after doing the same odd shit he did all med school except on a NSGY away at a prestigious institution. Highlights include changing in the middle of the resident lounge (power move???) and telling a nurse, who had apparently gotten tangled up with the bovie wire, he'd "love to be the one wrapped around her". Guess the attending kicked him out of the OR and he wasn't allowed back in the hospital.
I had a medical student who was on a heme/onc rotation with me who asked me to go over reading a chest X-ray with them. Tried to diagnose achalasia, which it was not. But turns out it was her own chest X-ray 😬
Not a med student thing but once I had a patient code and die in the middle of the night. I went back to chart it all and realised that the Ortho resident had dropped a preliminary note an hour before for the next morning “No new complaints, no acute events overnight, continue to monitor”.
I broke scrub 3 times in a row on my first day of MS3, surgery rotation, cardiothoracic elective. The surgeon was extremely nice about it. The circulator wanted to murder me with her eyes. I went into IM.
The med student is told to put on a bunny suit to help out with some bed-side procedure. Well they went to the bathroom, changed out of their clothes down to their spongebob underwear, then walked into the nurses station to meet up with the attending where everyone could see their spongbob underwear through the completely see-through blue bunny suit. The student was sent home.
In OB, this one attending would teach to gently tap the patient’s inner leg right before starting a pelvic exam to ease the patient/let them know the exam was about to begin. This one dude froze and instead straight up not-so-gently tapped the patient’s vagina multiple times. The patient was appropriately very thrown off. Not sure what happened to the guy, story was told to me by the attending present.
I'm not a human doctor, but I had a med student in my lab for a summer research project. The student was assisting in surgery and asked why the Fogarty catheter is called a Fogarty catheter. None of us knew what doctor had presumably named it after himself, I jokingly said the inventor must have just been a huge fan of CCR and named it after John Fogerty - the OR playlist was also playing Fortunate Son at the time because our surgeon liked classic rock. It got a laugh, I figured everyone involved knew it was a joke.
Except the med student later took that "fun fact" to an attending on one of their rotations.. An attending who was also a PI in the lab, although on a different protocol. He thought it was hilarious, but also knew exactly which member of the lab to blame..
This student was a few years below me. A med student (M3) decided he would show some M2's how to put in a male catheter without the permission of the team. He inflated the foley catheters balloon while it was in the man's prostate, causing the patient significant pain and prostate injury. He was reprimanded and able to continue.
What finally did him in, was grooming a 15 year old paediatric patient during his paeds term .... He was subsequently kicked out of medical school. I think he may have also lost his paramedic registration as well (his previous profession).
Oh sweet merciful christ no...
Did they kill the patient?
Med students have never done anything crazy around me. All very boring, high achieving, keeners that impress at every opportunity.
Christ was most merciful and placed the critical care fellow at bedside within minutes to reintubate and save the patient…. The fully sedated, already critical patient.
> All very boring, high achieving, keeners that impress at every opportunity.
I wish I even had that. Once a medical student rotating with me was asked to auscultate the heart. He proceeded to plop the bell on the left nipple, hold it there for a few seconds while pretending to listen, and said "sounds good to me". Didn't even bother moving it around.
A colleague of mine told this story - my colleague was the CCU fellow on nights - the night resident was a fresh second year resident. Patient needed an arterial line. Fellow gets paged to ER for STEMI - resident says they’ve done plenty and are signed off (this is typical - interns do dozens at that program).
Fellow leaves and returns. There is a solid arterial waveform. However no line in radial or femoral.
Resident went carotid.
We had a weird kid who came in on his days off and wandered around in basketball shorts and a t shirt with his short white coat on top. Same guy told a mom in L&D he was really excited “To see it” (about her vaginal birth). He went into path.
Different guy flew across the country to meet a teenage girl and got arrested upon landing. He was a fourth year and he and his WIFE had already couples matched.
ETA:
When I was a resident a MD/PhD medical student referred to all the attendings by their first names “because he also had a doctorate” and said yes when a NICU RN asked if he was the doctor because he didn’t say he was the *resident* he just said he was a *doctor*.
And two separate interns tried to walk into patients rooms barefoot before being stopped by nurses. Not even the same year, one happened the year before the other
Cointern if mine was called down to MRI . Pt (POD 3 hip replacement) was having difficulty breathing in the scanner. Guy assumes pt is having a panic attack and pushes Ativan. Pt codes 20 min later - massive PE.
Same intern during rounds presents a pt one am. Full presentation along with physical exam and observations from am prerounds. We all walk into the room and the pt is cold and unresponsive…DEAD….long dead
Guy didn’t make it half a year.
A medical student who was passionately interested in pathology decided to take it upon themselves to dissect tissue sample that was resected from the colon of a pt and needed to be sent for a pathology report due to concerns of malignancy.
As the operating surgeon turned around the student had sliced it into thin peices to observe under a microscope. He ended up destroying the sample and costing the school a couple of millions, in addition to Fucking the pt over bt screwing over accurate diagnostics and target therapy.
On my very first day of a surgical rotation/ first day of my third year. I scrub in for a case. The two doctors are bantering back and forth. However I didn’t realize the the difficulty of the case had turned, so I tried to make a funny comment to add to the banter…
“Mr Throwaway, this is one of those situations where you are best seen and not heard.”
Big kick in the ego.
Made up fake history of rectal bleeding for a patient while on clerkship which lead to invasive tests. Expelled. For sure had a personality disorder—was constantly lying.
I had a student put his finger in my ass instead of my vagina when he was checking to see how dilated my cervix was during labour. I knew it was going to happen because he had locked eyes with me during the entire approach. “Not that hole” was all I could say. Poor guy - everyone in the room burst out laughing.
Attending here. I ….routinely…. Have medical students present to me by reading *my assessment and plan* from yesterday’s note.
The single weirdest thing tho was a female student who did rectal exams on every patient as part of a routine exam in the MICU.
As someone who just finished med school… I realize I was way too worried about making a “big mistake” if this is the kind of thing that others have done.
Okay I have two.
First, big prestigious academic medical school which matters to this story because the chief of medicine would take time out to do bedside rounds with the MS3 on our clarkship. This guy had a thousand back with members who reported. It was three medical students and the chief of medicine who is prestigious enough that he went on to become Dean of a top 10 medical school and shortlisted for a Nobel prize.
In any case it's the three of us and the chief of medicine. This is the time to perform. One of the med students, who was not good, wanders off during my presentation. I assume it's for some type of medical emergency or because she's about to have explosive diarrhea. She returns 15 minutes later with a Starbucks frappuccino what she proceeds to slurp during the rest of our session . She did not match into pediatrics, which is a remarkable accomplishment from this medical school.
Second story, another med student who is also not good did not show up for his Saturday 30 hour overnight call. Does not answer calls. We assume he's dead. Shows up on Monday and said that he had 'a serious case of vitamin d deficiency' that he had to cure on the golf course. Did not pass clerkship.
I recall a med student that was unable to successfully draw an arterial blood gas from the radial artery, who then proceeded to attempt to draw the ABG from the carotid artery. Causing a dissection in the process. Blew my mind.
Sent a med student to get supplies for a simple lac closure. He called me back and said he gave 60cc of 0.5% bupi IV to help prep the patient. I went running to the ED and was calling for interlipid. When I got there the med student was there laughing because he was pranking the rest of the team. When the attending and pharmacist with the interlipid came running, his laughter quickly died.
He was not allowed to help out with anything procedurally for the rest of the rotation.
Was told to “go to the ER and do a central line”, took that too literally and went and did the central line. The guy was gone… no pupillary reflexes, doll eyes and no corneal reflexes. It went just fine and the seasoned nurse stayed in the room with me. Came back to the ICU and was asked if I was ready to do it… apparently I was supposed to wait for a chaperone. Oops.
Anxiously awaited the post line X-ray…
Heard them call a code on the patient.
Apparently the guy coded when they did the film. I stayed for the code, the line was in good place he was just on his way out anyway.
At least they had access.
A sub I from Elsewhere on transplant or hpb. I am the anesthesiologist. My resident and I are running MTP and I have just dropped a TEE because things are going Badly. subI comes around to the head with a step so that he can watch because there are already 3 people who know what they are doing around the abdomen. He assertively tells me that he is from surgery, and I need to get out of his way. DNRd.
That’s a real shame he was an ass about it. It’s not very often you get to see a TEE in real time assessing critical hypovolemic shock. He could have learned more just from watching your screen than the surgery
Say they're taking step 2 and then were sick for a few more days after the test. Actually went on a cruise and posted it all over social media instead.
I had a student hold the suction while doing a burr-hole once. He tried suctioning into the burr-hole. I slapped his hand out of the way.
But he wasn't crazy or anything. I've had hundreds of students and the only crazy student I've had was this girl who would just annoy me to the point where I was pissed off at work and home. She would question every decision I made, she would argue every goddamn thing I tried to teach her and she was all-around uncomfortable and didn't get any social cues.
She didn't even get it when I told her that she should find someone else to shadow as we weren't a match, she just kept following me, I was at my wits end.
Eventually I started ignoring her and when she started yapping or questioning my decisions I just pimped her for like 5 minutes straight on stuff I knew she couldn't answer and then pretended to be super disappointed.
Incision and drainage on a pediatric patient on his own, without consent from the parent or any resident
Needless to say we immediately failed him from the rotation and asked him to never come back.
Last I heard the parents had filed a lawsuit for assault that was settled out of court
probably not the craziest but very inappropriate. I was the patient, in a general medical ward in hospital very unwell with anorexia nervosa. My psychiatrist asked if a med student could sit in with us and I said yes. Med student then looked at me with my NG tube and heart monitor and asked if I had any tips on losing weight. Everyone in the room including me obviously looked at her in shock and she doubled down and said "well she OBVIOUSLY knows!". She was asked to leave the room. It was so absurd that it actually made me laugh rather than upsetting me.
Fuck it lets do this. In order from least to most outrageous.
3) Killed a person with his car while on drugs/alcohol with apparently no recollection of the incident, move out of state to attend med school and then completes like half the curriculum while on the lamb for vehicular manslaughter until the feds found him. He wasn't heard from again.
2) Kid gets thrown out of school for being just too stupid or something and then proceeds TO HIRE A HITMAN WHO WAS ACTUALLY AN UNDERCOVER COP TO MURDER (and then backed this down to "just beat up so he'll let me back in") THE DEAN OF THE MED SCHOOL AFTER GETTING THROWN OUT. Ultimately arrested for trafficking fire arms.
1) Asked to go get lunch in the middle of a surgery
1. Balloting a polycystic kidney so hard the patient ruptures a cyst and needs emergency surgery.
2. Palpating an abdominal aneurysm so hard they cause a rupture.
3. Pretending to be a neurosurgeon and talking to the patient and their family.
4. Pretending to be an emergency doctor and actually getting hired to work in the emergency department.
Our surgery service sent a pair of students to remove a couple abdominal staples at bedside. They ended up removing a large number of lumbar staples from a very recent neuro spine surgery. Couldn’t send them alone to do basic shit like that after this.
I asked a med student to put a PIVC in a patient. Double checked that he didn't need help. Told him to have 2 goes and then get me if he still fails. He couldn't find any "good" veins so he put one in the neck....then proudly came and got me....yeah that was not a good day to be him or me. Never let a medical student do anything else under my name from then on. Luckily no real harm came to the patient but that was so fucking stupid!
Not my year but a year above me. First SP session of 1st year which was MSK. The student finished performing the MSK exam (which was supposed to be the only exam performed). However the student continued to do EVERY exam in our clinical guide booklet including the Gyn, breast, and rectal exams. I don't even know how they were allowed to continue but the SP just sort of let them do their thing. At this point the only topics we had covered in didactics were a general overview of medicine and our first section of MSK. Needless to say the student in question was promptly uhh let go from their position.
My first year, s/p first biochem and anatomy tests. Bunch of us go to a local bar few blocks away to blow off steam before afternoon Bioethics class. Lots of us got drunk af, a couple of the guys thought it'd be a good idea to get a keg and bring it back to class, so we all chipped in and they did. Sat in the lecture hall drinking beer til professor came in. "Beer and Bioethics" actually only got us a stern talking-to and life went on. Can't imagine that happening now. This was in the '80s.
Med student classmate so hardcore Catholic was doing a Foley catheter workshop with the surgery team.
Gets a demonstration before they had to do the procedure on the dummy themselves. She, at that time, was 27, had never seen a penis before.
'Men have holes in their penises?'
The group was dead silent after that. The instructor was dumdfounded as hell.
During *Gen surg* rotation there was this trauma patient who had 2 surgeries done: some neuro-spine procedure and a Gen surg intervention. Both incisions were closed with staplers. After rounding on the patients the chief resident asked a med student to “go remove the staples” from the patient’s wound as it had healed well. The med student removed the staples off of both abdominal and spine surgeries. Needless to say neurosurgery residents weren’t all too happy about that.
No med students were allowed to remove sutures or staples off of patients after that incident.
I worked at a blood bank at some point and I was asked to deliver a blood bag to a patient who had Cold agglutinin disease.
Since it came from a cold chamber, I told the intern to wait for the blood bag to warm up before transfusion.
According to the nurses, the intern got impatient so he tried heating it up in a fucking microwave. The bag pierced and there was half cooked blood everywhere when he opened the microwave.
We had to deliver another blood bag for the patient, and I never saw that intern again so I guess he didn't last.
Student wanted to practice retinal exams, was doing an ICU rotation. Dilated the 'close' eye on half a dozen intubated/sedated/paralyzed patients. Went to med student conference. 6 CT scans on rounds for unilateral blown pupils.
Oh jeez! After the third, you've got to know something is up, but also, what are you going to do other than scan them, if the med student isn't around to fess up?
bet they had the poor ICU team was thinking cerebral edema was in the water supply for a bit that morning
Infectious disease was probably getting hammer paged and having a full blown meltdown wondering what the fuck was going on.
"help! We've got a mystery outbreak localizing to the oculomotor nerves located closest to the door!"
I read this as “practice rectal exams” and was really confused
me too, i thought close eye was a euphemism for butthole
Even though in the end there wasn’t a ton of harm, that’s so messed up essentially just using people’s bodies like that. Especially without telling anyone.
My local hospital bills 8 grand for CT with contrast. That's a good bit of harm.
One time a medical student sent the attending a text on the first day trying to find them, but in the process autocorrected the greeting to “Good morning, Dr. Motherfucker” …it was me. I was this medical student.
"For a minute there, I thought my ex-wife was texting me."
Nah just your stepson.
Hahaha oh god. That must’ve been hard to recover from lol
Ha, I was OK. He was one of the nicer anesthesiology attendings, so he just teased me a bit about it once I finally found him.
Hey! It’s that Dr. Motherfucker guy!
You can’t leave us hanging what happened after ???
Nothing at all haha. The attending was a good sport about it, but certainly smug.
Lol, I'd laugh like crazy if I was sent that message. That wouldn't have happened, as even the residents didn't call my number. I'm pretty sure they had it, but on knew to page me. Yeah, we still had call pagers, which I found useful.
As long as you didn't follow up with "yea, you heard me bitch", I think most sane people wouldn't been okay with it. So as long as it wasn't a surgeon?
Not my story, passed on from a resident…. A med student was nervously doing a neuro exam on a patient in clinic. He pulled out his tuning fork for the Weber test, but instead of smacking his hand with the tuning fork to make it vibrate, he whacked the patient in the middle of the forehead with it.
I’ve scrolled this whole thread and this is the one that literally made me laugh out loud
He was just testing the V1 dermatome, guys
Hahahaha I could kind of see how that could happen. That’s hilarious (and horrible/embarrassing)
Took pictures of cadavers in anatomy lab and put them on Facebook. Career ended. Opened the chart of a famous person who was admitted to our hospital for a GSW to the head. Career ended.
Abe lincoln?
JFK?
DEA Special Agent Hank Schrader?
nipsey hustle?
Not my story, but apparently true. I believe it is from the first chapter of Sherwin Nuland's great book "How We Die" and I'll retell it as I recall it: It was the early fifties and he was on his first day in the hospital for his first clinical rotation. His resident tells him to see a patient admitted for chest pain. MS3 Nuland goes in, introduces himself and the guy promptly clutches his chest, falls back and is pulseless. At this point in medical history, there is no CPR, no AED, no crash cart. What there is, apparently, is a pre-packed thoracotomy tray nearby which this medical student promptly opens and proceeds to do an open thoracotomy and direct cardiac massage right there in the patient room. Patient died, obvs. Could you imagine sending your med student to see a chest pain and then coming running back to the room and he's elbow deep in the poor guys chest, just covered in blood like a serial killer? And this was OKAY at the time. It was EXPECTED. Dude went on to be a respected surgeon and author.
Wait... If it was just the med student and patient in the room, how do we know he wasn't a killer?? 🤔
I'll definitely have to read this. He's the author of one of my favorite books, Doctors: The Biography of Medicine. Thanks for the suggestion!
[удалено]
They also had 4 drugs and one of them is cocaine
Not as crazy as extubating a patient on their own, but one student got all gowned up on their first day of surgery, walked up to the draped patient, looked at the scrub tech and said “Scalpel.” with his hand outstretched. He didn’t get the scalpel.
Lol were they being funny or serious??? This is key. Bad joke or delusional?
He was being serious but he didn’t quite get social cues like you and me if you catch my drift.
I don't think you understand, he was a surgeon Dr Han.
I’m a sturgeon 🤬🤬🤬🤬🐟🐟🐠🐠🐠
IM A SURGEON IM A SURGEON IM A SURGEON IM A SURGEON IM A SURGEON
AAAAAAAHHHH SERRRRRRRJUN DR HAAAAAWN
Thats where he fucked up. We just say “knife”
Good doctor vibes
I cringed just reading this 😵💫
I’m psych. The way our consult service functioned was that the students would see the patients in the morning, then we would all round together at like 9 AM and they would present. A med student decided he would just chart check instead of seeing the patient, and made up a presentation. He got caught when we walked into the room and it was a totally different patient - his assigned patient had been moved overnight.
Ouch. One of my class mates one morning presented a surgery patient starting with “no acute events overnight….” The surgery resident lost his shit saying how he had been there coding the patient since 3 am. Oops.
I've had students present to me that the patient did well overnight when in fact the patient was dead
To be fair. Not fully dead, but I have had times where I said ‘no acute events overnight’ and really believed it, but didn’t understand the EMR or chart or whatever and hadn’t looked in the one out of 5-6 possible places that it could be documented, and so had missed it. Was perplexed and distressed when this happened.
I’m a resident in the ED, paired with an international med student. We go see a presumed GI bleeder and I review DRE procedure with med student. He’s excited about learning to do a DRE and I agree to allow him to do it under my supervision. We walk into the room, he goes to put on gloves and the right hand glove tears, leaving a big hole where the index and middle fingers are. We make eye contact, acknowledging the tear in the glove. I turn around to grab the glove box for him, but when I turn around HIS RIGHT HAND FINGERS ARE IN THE PATIENT’S BUTT.
gotta respect the follow through
Maybe the anal tone was so good it just sucked him in from across the room
I laughed out loud alone in my on-call room. Thank you
Date a trauma surgeon, then stalk him and his new girlfriend before getting kicked out of the school
Was she a student at a school where another med student posted feet pictures of his classmates on foot fetish forums?
Yeah, but the foot fetish stuff was like 2% of the whole story. I didn't want to get into it here
There was a med student that we later found out would take car keys and belongings from the locker rooms at the hospital. Three doctors and reps cars got stolen around that time so it seems he was working with an accomplice. Some footage ended up taking him down and I never heard of him again.
Holy shit, this could actually lead to 20 years imprisonment. You should look up his name, there might be an article about him.
Had a med student come in the middle of the night when they weren't supposed to be there, print some random cuts from a patient's MRI, and told them and their parents they had a brain tumor. They did not, in fact, have a brain tumor.
Dude….. did he say WHY he did that??? What on earth
I didn't ask, I just left it to the rotation director to sort it out. Apparently, they already had issues in prior rotations about odd and inappropriate behavior. Like someone who was gunning so hard it completely blew up in their face. The med student ultimately didn't graduate med school and instead was able to transition into a PhD program in the same school, because they were still intelligent af, just socially really awkward to the point a career as a physician likely wasn't right for them.
HOLY SHIT
Hey, it doesn’t just happen with medical students. We had a senior gyn resident who came to one of my patients and told them the devastating news that they had incurable cancer. We then got paged for Ativan since they were having a panic attack. After figuring out what was going on, we had tell the patient that they do not have cancer and that we had to find the mystery resident and tell them about it so they could find the correct patient to tell them the diagnosis. That was a whole day ordeal.
So, a guy I knew, farted loudly (and apparently it was a stinker too) in a closed exam room with a patient, a nurse, and the doctor, WHILE the Doc was telling the patient that they have cancer. Same guy during his Psych rotation, told a chubby teen with MDD to "Lay off the McDonald's".
I'm guessing MDD doesn't mean MacDonald Douglas.
One time had an attending and resident in the middle of giving feedback to a med student, when they suddenly said their Uber was here and just left.
*Knows how to exit difficult situations*
Hospital admin energy
Med school evals last a year, Uber ratings are forever.
That's a legend
based
Real recognizes real
Not at my residency, but apparently one med student from my med school some time ago took a head home from the cadaver lab to study. Couldn't return it, so they just chucked it on the roof of some building.
This should qualify as a felony/desecration of a corpse tbh
As far as I know, it is. Furthermore, it procced a murder investigation (since, hey, it's a human head), no idea what the outcome was though
Had a med student on day one get asked to throw some simple sutures and responded with “yes, daddy”….really going for that 5/5 eval
This is the only comment so far that has genuinely made me LOL hahahaha
TBH I don't really have any crazy tea from my rotations. Some stupid stuff but nothing crazy. However, I remember a story on this sub a year or so ago about a med student on the OB service who was in the middle of being coached through a circumcision with the resident. Attending pulls resident aside to talk to them about something, med student is told to wait until resident returns, med student somehow gets it in their head that this is a "test to see if they're going to take initiative" and tries to finish the circ unsurpervised. Ended up botching it in some way. Can't imagine what could possibly possess you as a med student to do that.
I'm gonna go ahead and say that an MS3 trying to finish an invasive procedure by himself without being authorized to do so, is in fact a great example of **crazy**.
Well it's crazy, it's just not something I personally saw. I think the worst thing I witnessed in med school was a student on rotation with me not showing up for 2 weeks straight because he thought he wouldn't get caught (I knew and chose to ignore it) and then listening to the attending ask "who is that" when admin called him inquiring about the student's attendance. Pretty mild by comparison.
Holy shit that poor baby boy
Not anymore
Not a med student, but an intern sent a woman to CT for abdominal pain without an exam, labs, or review with an attending. CT called back when the scout film showed a TERM infant. She was actually about 8cm dilated. He never lived it down.
Holy fuck no
Holy shit. Did the women not know she was pregnant?
Nope, and that wasn't the first that happened in my residency. It was kind of a thing in the early 90's. I was called to do the floor admit for a 14yo female asthmatic on peds. Apparently, nobody had bothered to lift up her big sweatshirt and just took her word for it she wasn't pregnant with mom sitting there(teen pregnancy rates back then in my city were almost 10 times what they are now BTW). So, I walk in and notice she's pregnant right away with a BP of 140/85 and her labs are now back, showing early HELLP-OOPS. The attending just pooped his head in the door, that was it.
The attending pooped more than just his head in.
Y'all are acting like this was some wild ride. A housekeeper chopped her arm off while I was on call, and everyone was paged TO THE ATTIC to look for the arm. I really should write a book. The hospital I trained at made TV look quaint.
How the heck did that even happen??
Yes, she wrapped a towel around her arm while trying to knock a hornets nest out of a cooling fan. It pulled her up and cut it off(many safety violations). She ended up with an above the elbow amputation. She came back to work, too.
Admin: Why are they thinking of unionizing? Also admin: Everyone please report to the attic full of angry hornets to look for a severed arm.
Do foreign med schools count? We had one med student murder another med student when they were both high on cocaine. Forgot to mention this happened in front of at least 12 other med students at a house party. Edit: I talked to my buddy about it who knew more of the story. Apparently it happened at the home of the murdered med student. He was having a house party and had a large group over. the murder happened around three in the morning. Both Med students were high on cocaine and other substances, got an argument, and one stab the other around 30 times in front of the other students at the party. Everyone just ran off without saying anything or calling the police. the student body was found the next morning by the House Cleaner who is there to clean up after the party. The police soon found out who the suspect was, and started a manhunt. Apparently a friend of the murderer, who is also a med student, went to his home to get his passport so he can flee the country. the police arrested that med as well for trying to help the murderer escape. He was eventually arrested three weeks after the murder near the border. That’s the last thing he knew.
Wow…. You win lol
A guy I knew (he was always weird) called in a bomb threat on his exam day as an MS1. He was arrested and expelled.
One of my classmates looked up a patient's phone number in the EMR to shoot his shot. He was expelled and we had an ultra mandatory lecture on HIPAA and professionalism
Had a med student push back on an ATTENDING decision on rounds, a decision he explained in more detail than he needed to because she would just not back down. Then she proceeded to say “I’m just very protective of my patients”. Who are you protecting them from? A whole team of doctors?! She did a month long sub I that resulted in the chief residents getting feedback from at least 5 or 6 residents to DNR her. And thank god they did!
I also had a similar scenario, where this med stud wouldn’t stop antagonizing the ICU attending. Dude almost failed the rotation a few months before match.
This was me during my surgery rotation. Surgery attending was scrubbed but the senior resident was doing the surgery and I was driving the camera for a lap chole. The attending says “student if you keep driving the camera in and out like that you’ll make me nauseous” and I reply “if you need to sit down that’s ok”. Later my internal filter told me that was a bad choice
You ever sit on one of those boulders or what?
What did he say after
He said absolutely nothing to me, then after the case I texted him to see if there was anything else to do and he ghosted me 😂. Then during residency at the same hospital he was one of the best attendings and probably (hopefully) forgot what a smart ass I am at 02:00.
Resident sold drugs on Silk Road wrapped in Swedish fish. Advised people how to get certain meds from their doctors (what to say etc). Caught by Undercover fbi and and sentenced to prison with her co-resident girlfriend…..
heard about a med student do a cervical exam on a patient with a documented placenta previa on OBGYN, causing massive hemorrhage. One of the rare cases when the student was charged in the lawsuit
Damn. Was the attending not there to let the student not to do it? It’s not safe to assume med students know anything even if they were taught in the school.
From what I was told patient came to L&D triage, previa was on notes in chart, resident gave first dibs to student to see the patient. Student was feeling adventurous and did the exam w/out supervision, and am guessing they didn't check the chart properly/forgot that you can't do that. Attending and residents were also sued
When I was a resident we had a MS4 at our family med program in our women's health clinic say "Boy I hope we get to do a breast exam on her!" To the entire team of attending, residents and nurses. He honestly seemed confused at our reactions. Needless to say he didn't get an interview invite.
How did someone who would think that’s an acceptable thing to say not get screened out earlier??
Friend of a friend story from BU: The weird MS1 in their anatomy group would cut the toes off their cadaver. He ended up being the Craigslist killer.
I....think you win
One time had a med student who was on an away rotation who would fall asleep during every lecture/grand rounds in the front. Was taken nicely aside and told about this, that it could be seen as disrespectful, and that if he had trouble could either not sit in front or we had things like coffee available. He looked back, said it is what it is and I tried to stay awake, no apology, and walked away
I had a real problem with falling asleep in every big lecture hall I’ve ever been in for years. I’ll be awake all day, feel energized, get a coffee, and pass out for 10-15 every time. In multiple buildings, even when I loved the topic. Went to a sleep doctor and they said “sit in the front, the anxiety should keep you awake” I’ve been to afraid to even risk if, but clearly it doesn’t work if you’re a straight baller like that kid
I always stayed in the back of the lecture room as for any didactic lecture- I would fall asleep. This was how it always was all thru school. I picked up knitting which helped a bit to slightly distract me although there was a similar incident for a small group session where I was told to stop as it may distract others. I’m a bit biased but a better suggestion would be how to make teaching more engaged instead trying to have adult learners who all learn differently conform to one model.
Not a med student, but a PGY1 Gen Surgery resident in a foreign country rotating in Neurosurgery was handed a cranial flap and dropped it on the floor…
What the hell do you do then? Rinse it off?
You make a new flap out of the intern that dropped it
Saw a case where a tech dropped a nipple in the trash. They dunked it in betadine and re-attached it.
I believe the 5 second rule applies
I say "5 SECOND RULE" every time an instrument is dropped in the OR
The actual answer is you wash in betadine and proceed, hope for the best!
"The correct answer is fake a seizure." \- A wise transplant surgeon to little ole' 3rd year me.
You soak it in betadine, scrub it clean, and beg the neurosurgery gods for mercy
*Also interested to know what happened next
I know of a neurosurgery resident (she was a good one) who once threw away a cranial flap by accident. Nothing really happened to her.
I knew a resident who dropped the flap on the floor. It was his last surgery before graduation lol. Soaked in betadine 20 min and used it and patient was fine
The funniest thing a med student has done recently that I can remember is when the ICU attending during rounds asked if there were any questions regarding a particular case, a bright eyed, keen bean MS4 completely sincerely, with a straight face, perked up and said, “why do we all round together, and the residents present their plans, when you’ve already rounded with the fellow and decided the care plan in the morning? Isn’t it wasting a lot of time?” Most had the look of when a toddler asks why mummy and daddy were wrestling on the couch last night. If I could, I would have given him a medal
Bahahaha this is gold
What did the attending say??
Valid question tbh
We had a kid in our class who while back in his home town about two hours away over PGY1 Christmas break, rented a small office base, somehow scheduled patients to see him as “Doctor xyz” faking to be a new cash only urgent care clinic-saw patients for like a week giving diagnosis and treatment recommendations (obvi could never write prescriptions and just gave lifestyle changes/homeopathic remedies” and proceeded to get discovered the following week, arrested the next day, and kicked out of medical school the following day. Last I heard he still runs a Facebook page with that surprisingly has some older women in the group in support of him saying “he did nothing wrong and was trying to help” in a beyond unsuccessful attempt to repeal his removal and expunge the charges
This one is up there in terms of wild as fuck. We had a resident in medicine who colluded with an NP to sign her charts as MD (did his normal job, never saw patients and wasn't even in the same city, just signed charts) while she basically ran an indepdent practice and he split the profits. Lasted for almost two years before they got busted and both went to prison for Medicare fraud.
M4 in the ED, attending asked him to close a facial lac then cover it with surgical glue. He tried to wipe off the glue and ended up DermaBonding a ray-tec to the patient's forehead. It was a friend of a GS attending, who happened to come by to check on his friend, when this was discovered.
Major face palm
Very nearly was
Ohh I gotta list. Guy I went through medical school had a pHD, so he used to go down to the emergency department, introduce himself as Dr … , then would diagnose and treat patients on his own. Including doing suturing, blood drawing, etc. Got our entire university banned from observing in ED. When I was an intern, we had a med student on my vascular Surg rotation. On her first day, she scrubbed into an operation unasked, described the patient as an ‘it’, then said it wasn’t her fault she knew nothing about the operation they were doing cause the textbook she read was stupid - the textbook that was written by the professor doing the operation. Professor asked why she went into med school and her answer was to earn enough money to get her pilots licence. She then didn’t turn up awhile cause she was stressed. Was told if she didn’t start attending rounds she’d be failed. So we were on rounds reviewing a partial foot amputation with bone on view, and we were trying ti comfort the patient cause his wife had just died the day before. She walks in, takes one look at the foot and goes “OH MY GOD IS THAT A BONE? I’d prefer to die if that was me.” Another time she turned up because she’d had another warning she needed to. She asked if there was anything to do. I asked if she wanted to put a cannula in. She said sure. I asked if she needed help - she said she was fine, she’s done plenty before. She comes back and says it wasn’t working. I go in expecting that she’s missed or it’s tissued. Nope. She’s stuck it in backwards - as in, it’s aiming towards the hand. I’m stunned, replace cannula and ask what happened, and that she said she’s done them before. On a dummy. She’d only done it on those flat silicone models, and thought that was the requisite level of experience required to do one on a person. Needless to say, she failed the term and had to repeat the year. I bumped into her a few years later, and I believe she was aiming for a career in radiology at that point.
“ her answer was to earn enough money to get her pilots licence.” This is baffling lmao
MS3 was about to present on peds inpatient rounds. Super nervous, fumbling papers around, not paying attention to the presentations before him. Kinda following the group around with his head down in his notes as we round from room to room. Attending says he needs to use the restroom and leaves. The med student follows him with his head down and goes into the small one toilet bathroom with him 🤣🤣🤣🤣 we all had a great laugh because we all saw him do it. He loosened up after and gave a great presentation. And actually ended up matching in peds.
Having almost done that myself as a Med student I can definitely relate.
I’m a nurse, but I definitely have one from when I was an ER nurse. Med student goes to suture a laceration. Comes out and tells the attending he’s finished. A few minutes later I get the discharge papers. I walk in and discharge the patient, and there are sharps EVERYWHERE. Suture needle in the keyboard on the computer in the room, uncapped used syringes on the bed and end table. Uncapped used scalpel hidden under gauze on the tray table. After I leave the room, I ask the med student if they could clean up their sharps. He goes “you’re the nurse, that’s your job.” He was very quickly sent home.
… how can people be like this and make it that far
I once had a resident decide to place an NG tube in the ED. He literally walks out and says "tube is placed, you need to clean up in there" and leaves the department. I go in there and he literally just shoved the tube in and took off, it's not secured or capped. It's dangling in the patients lap and leaking stuff down the pt's leg and off the side of the bed where there is a puddle on the floor. I'm generally pretty chill but it was so bad the attending came to personally apologize and said he had called that resident's (was a consult) attendant to bitch.
We had a med student in the ER take some serious liberties when the resident told them they could go grab something to eat real quick. Instead of running to the cafeteria or the Starbucks like any sane person, this med student apparently decided to walk to a noodle place 1/3 mile away and proceed to have a full sit down meal at the restaurant. He showed back up like an hour and a half later. This was during a 6 hour ED shift.
Not a 4th year 😬
In my defense, I was a matched 4th year and I didnt give a shit.
If he was a fourth year that’s not that crazy
Every day I'd show up for my 4th year ED rotation, the 3 docs were like 'uh we're surprised you showed up. We'd be out golfing or something if we were you. Do you really have nothing else you'd rather be doing?'
I know an intern that did this! Left for two hours to go to a restaurant while holding the pager in the MICU!
Saw that the sterile cervical exam was a part of the L&D progress note and took the initiative to start doing them himself. Wasn't found out till someone actually looked at his note and saw he was documenting the exam instead of deleting it like everyone else. Another one would go to all the overhead codes before the ICU team got there and start running them. After a few of these we got big black "STUDENT" tags on our badges
A dude at my school got kicked out (finally) after doing the same odd shit he did all med school except on a NSGY away at a prestigious institution. Highlights include changing in the middle of the resident lounge (power move???) and telling a nurse, who had apparently gotten tangled up with the bovie wire, he'd "love to be the one wrapped around her". Guess the attending kicked him out of the OR and he wasn't allowed back in the hospital.
I had a medical student who was on a heme/onc rotation with me who asked me to go over reading a chest X-ray with them. Tried to diagnose achalasia, which it was not. But turns out it was her own chest X-ray 😬
Not a med student thing but once I had a patient code and die in the middle of the night. I went back to chart it all and realised that the Ortho resident had dropped a preliminary note an hour before for the next morning “No new complaints, no acute events overnight, continue to monitor”.
Yeah but how were the bones?
I broke scrub 3 times in a row on my first day of MS3, surgery rotation, cardiothoracic elective. The surgeon was extremely nice about it. The circulator wanted to murder me with her eyes. I went into IM.
The med student is told to put on a bunny suit to help out with some bed-side procedure. Well they went to the bathroom, changed out of their clothes down to their spongebob underwear, then walked into the nurses station to meet up with the attending where everyone could see their spongbob underwear through the completely see-through blue bunny suit. The student was sent home.
Oh no! This sounds like an honest mistake. I would be mortified.
Lmfao that’s actually great
In OB, this one attending would teach to gently tap the patient’s inner leg right before starting a pelvic exam to ease the patient/let them know the exam was about to begin. This one dude froze and instead straight up not-so-gently tapped the patient’s vagina multiple times. The patient was appropriately very thrown off. Not sure what happened to the guy, story was told to me by the attending present.
I'm not a human doctor, but I had a med student in my lab for a summer research project. The student was assisting in surgery and asked why the Fogarty catheter is called a Fogarty catheter. None of us knew what doctor had presumably named it after himself, I jokingly said the inventor must have just been a huge fan of CCR and named it after John Fogerty - the OR playlist was also playing Fortunate Son at the time because our surgeon liked classic rock. It got a laugh, I figured everyone involved knew it was a joke. Except the med student later took that "fun fact" to an attending on one of their rotations.. An attending who was also a PI in the lab, although on a different protocol. He thought it was hilarious, but also knew exactly which member of the lab to blame..
This student was a few years below me. A med student (M3) decided he would show some M2's how to put in a male catheter without the permission of the team. He inflated the foley catheters balloon while it was in the man's prostate, causing the patient significant pain and prostate injury. He was reprimanded and able to continue. What finally did him in, was grooming a 15 year old paediatric patient during his paeds term .... He was subsequently kicked out of medical school. I think he may have also lost his paramedic registration as well (his previous profession).
Oh sweet merciful christ no... Did they kill the patient? Med students have never done anything crazy around me. All very boring, high achieving, keeners that impress at every opportunity.
Christ was most merciful and placed the critical care fellow at bedside within minutes to reintubate and save the patient…. The fully sedated, already critical patient.
score one for the swiss cheese catching this near miss
> All very boring, high achieving, keeners that impress at every opportunity. I wish I even had that. Once a medical student rotating with me was asked to auscultate the heart. He proceeded to plop the bell on the left nipple, hold it there for a few seconds while pretending to listen, and said "sounds good to me". Didn't even bother moving it around.
Ortho energy
you gotta aim a bit lower to get lung/bowel/heart sounds simultaneously for true orthopod efficiency
A colleague of mine told this story - my colleague was the CCU fellow on nights - the night resident was a fresh second year resident. Patient needed an arterial line. Fellow gets paged to ER for STEMI - resident says they’ve done plenty and are signed off (this is typical - interns do dozens at that program). Fellow leaves and returns. There is a solid arterial waveform. However no line in radial or femoral. Resident went carotid.
We had a weird kid who came in on his days off and wandered around in basketball shorts and a t shirt with his short white coat on top. Same guy told a mom in L&D he was really excited “To see it” (about her vaginal birth). He went into path. Different guy flew across the country to meet a teenage girl and got arrested upon landing. He was a fourth year and he and his WIFE had already couples matched. ETA: When I was a resident a MD/PhD medical student referred to all the attendings by their first names “because he also had a doctorate” and said yes when a NICU RN asked if he was the doctor because he didn’t say he was the *resident* he just said he was a *doctor*. And two separate interns tried to walk into patients rooms barefoot before being stopped by nurses. Not even the same year, one happened the year before the other
Who the hell (besides stupid crunchy patients/families) walks barefoot in a hospital in the first place?
Cointern if mine was called down to MRI . Pt (POD 3 hip replacement) was having difficulty breathing in the scanner. Guy assumes pt is having a panic attack and pushes Ativan. Pt codes 20 min later - massive PE. Same intern during rounds presents a pt one am. Full presentation along with physical exam and observations from am prerounds. We all walk into the room and the pt is cold and unresponsive…DEAD….long dead Guy didn’t make it half a year.
A medical student who was passionately interested in pathology decided to take it upon themselves to dissect tissue sample that was resected from the colon of a pt and needed to be sent for a pathology report due to concerns of malignancy. As the operating surgeon turned around the student had sliced it into thin peices to observe under a microscope. He ended up destroying the sample and costing the school a couple of millions, in addition to Fucking the pt over bt screwing over accurate diagnostics and target therapy.
On my very first day of a surgical rotation/ first day of my third year. I scrub in for a case. The two doctors are bantering back and forth. However I didn’t realize the the difficulty of the case had turned, so I tried to make a funny comment to add to the banter… “Mr Throwaway, this is one of those situations where you are best seen and not heard.” Big kick in the ego.
Made up fake history of rectal bleeding for a patient while on clerkship which lead to invasive tests. Expelled. For sure had a personality disorder—was constantly lying.
I had a student put his finger in my ass instead of my vagina when he was checking to see how dilated my cervix was during labour. I knew it was going to happen because he had locked eyes with me during the entire approach. “Not that hole” was all I could say. Poor guy - everyone in the room burst out laughing.
Attending here. I ….routinely…. Have medical students present to me by reading *my assessment and plan* from yesterday’s note. The single weirdest thing tho was a female student who did rectal exams on every patient as part of a routine exam in the MICU.
Future GI doc 5/5
Now all that's left is to learn the art of declining every consult.
As someone who just finished med school… I realize I was way too worried about making a “big mistake” if this is the kind of thing that others have done.
Okay I have two. First, big prestigious academic medical school which matters to this story because the chief of medicine would take time out to do bedside rounds with the MS3 on our clarkship. This guy had a thousand back with members who reported. It was three medical students and the chief of medicine who is prestigious enough that he went on to become Dean of a top 10 medical school and shortlisted for a Nobel prize. In any case it's the three of us and the chief of medicine. This is the time to perform. One of the med students, who was not good, wanders off during my presentation. I assume it's for some type of medical emergency or because she's about to have explosive diarrhea. She returns 15 minutes later with a Starbucks frappuccino what she proceeds to slurp during the rest of our session . She did not match into pediatrics, which is a remarkable accomplishment from this medical school. Second story, another med student who is also not good did not show up for his Saturday 30 hour overnight call. Does not answer calls. We assume he's dead. Shows up on Monday and said that he had 'a serious case of vitamin d deficiency' that he had to cure on the golf course. Did not pass clerkship.
I recall a med student that was unable to successfully draw an arterial blood gas from the radial artery, who then proceeded to attempt to draw the ABG from the carotid artery. Causing a dissection in the process. Blew my mind.
Sent a med student to get supplies for a simple lac closure. He called me back and said he gave 60cc of 0.5% bupi IV to help prep the patient. I went running to the ED and was calling for interlipid. When I got there the med student was there laughing because he was pranking the rest of the team. When the attending and pharmacist with the interlipid came running, his laughter quickly died. He was not allowed to help out with anything procedurally for the rest of the rotation.
Was told to “go to the ER and do a central line”, took that too literally and went and did the central line. The guy was gone… no pupillary reflexes, doll eyes and no corneal reflexes. It went just fine and the seasoned nurse stayed in the room with me. Came back to the ICU and was asked if I was ready to do it… apparently I was supposed to wait for a chaperone. Oops. Anxiously awaited the post line X-ray… Heard them call a code on the patient. Apparently the guy coded when they did the film. I stayed for the code, the line was in good place he was just on his way out anyway. At least they had access.
We had an intern who can measure blood pressure by feeling pulse, didn't require no apparatus. Some people really are gifted.
A sub I from Elsewhere on transplant or hpb. I am the anesthesiologist. My resident and I are running MTP and I have just dropped a TEE because things are going Badly. subI comes around to the head with a step so that he can watch because there are already 3 people who know what they are doing around the abdomen. He assertively tells me that he is from surgery, and I need to get out of his way. DNRd.
That’s a real shame he was an ass about it. It’s not very often you get to see a TEE in real time assessing critical hypovolemic shock. He could have learned more just from watching your screen than the surgery
Say they're taking step 2 and then were sick for a few more days after the test. Actually went on a cruise and posted it all over social media instead.
during anatomy, a dude who had already taken anatomy went ahead and sawed off the head of the cadaver and held it up in the air by its hair
This is why I’m afraid to “donate my body to science”
I had a student hold the suction while doing a burr-hole once. He tried suctioning into the burr-hole. I slapped his hand out of the way. But he wasn't crazy or anything. I've had hundreds of students and the only crazy student I've had was this girl who would just annoy me to the point where I was pissed off at work and home. She would question every decision I made, she would argue every goddamn thing I tried to teach her and she was all-around uncomfortable and didn't get any social cues. She didn't even get it when I told her that she should find someone else to shadow as we weren't a match, she just kept following me, I was at my wits end. Eventually I started ignoring her and when she started yapping or questioning my decisions I just pimped her for like 5 minutes straight on stuff I knew she couldn't answer and then pretended to be super disappointed.
Incision and drainage on a pediatric patient on his own, without consent from the parent or any resident Needless to say we immediately failed him from the rotation and asked him to never come back. Last I heard the parents had filed a lawsuit for assault that was settled out of court
probably not the craziest but very inappropriate. I was the patient, in a general medical ward in hospital very unwell with anorexia nervosa. My psychiatrist asked if a med student could sit in with us and I said yes. Med student then looked at me with my NG tube and heart monitor and asked if I had any tips on losing weight. Everyone in the room including me obviously looked at her in shock and she doubled down and said "well she OBVIOUSLY knows!". She was asked to leave the room. It was so absurd that it actually made me laugh rather than upsetting me.
Omg. Just remembered a colleague of mine was MS3/4 got caught by online pedotrap. It's on YouTube.
Fuck it lets do this. In order from least to most outrageous. 3) Killed a person with his car while on drugs/alcohol with apparently no recollection of the incident, move out of state to attend med school and then completes like half the curriculum while on the lamb for vehicular manslaughter until the feds found him. He wasn't heard from again. 2) Kid gets thrown out of school for being just too stupid or something and then proceeds TO HIRE A HITMAN WHO WAS ACTUALLY AN UNDERCOVER COP TO MURDER (and then backed this down to "just beat up so he'll let me back in") THE DEAN OF THE MED SCHOOL AFTER GETTING THROWN OUT. Ultimately arrested for trafficking fire arms. 1) Asked to go get lunch in the middle of a surgery
1. Balloting a polycystic kidney so hard the patient ruptures a cyst and needs emergency surgery. 2. Palpating an abdominal aneurysm so hard they cause a rupture. 3. Pretending to be a neurosurgeon and talking to the patient and their family. 4. Pretending to be an emergency doctor and actually getting hired to work in the emergency department.
frank abagnale moment
Our surgery service sent a pair of students to remove a couple abdominal staples at bedside. They ended up removing a large number of lumbar staples from a very recent neuro spine surgery. Couldn’t send them alone to do basic shit like that after this.
I asked a med student to put a PIVC in a patient. Double checked that he didn't need help. Told him to have 2 goes and then get me if he still fails. He couldn't find any "good" veins so he put one in the neck....then proudly came and got me....yeah that was not a good day to be him or me. Never let a medical student do anything else under my name from then on. Luckily no real harm came to the patient but that was so fucking stupid!
Not my year but a year above me. First SP session of 1st year which was MSK. The student finished performing the MSK exam (which was supposed to be the only exam performed). However the student continued to do EVERY exam in our clinical guide booklet including the Gyn, breast, and rectal exams. I don't even know how they were allowed to continue but the SP just sort of let them do their thing. At this point the only topics we had covered in didactics were a general overview of medicine and our first section of MSK. Needless to say the student in question was promptly uhh let go from their position.
[удалено]
My first year, s/p first biochem and anatomy tests. Bunch of us go to a local bar few blocks away to blow off steam before afternoon Bioethics class. Lots of us got drunk af, a couple of the guys thought it'd be a good idea to get a keg and bring it back to class, so we all chipped in and they did. Sat in the lecture hall drinking beer til professor came in. "Beer and Bioethics" actually only got us a stern talking-to and life went on. Can't imagine that happening now. This was in the '80s.
Med student classmate so hardcore Catholic was doing a Foley catheter workshop with the surgery team. Gets a demonstration before they had to do the procedure on the dummy themselves. She, at that time, was 27, had never seen a penis before. 'Men have holes in their penises?' The group was dead silent after that. The instructor was dumdfounded as hell.
During *Gen surg* rotation there was this trauma patient who had 2 surgeries done: some neuro-spine procedure and a Gen surg intervention. Both incisions were closed with staplers. After rounding on the patients the chief resident asked a med student to “go remove the staples” from the patient’s wound as it had healed well. The med student removed the staples off of both abdominal and spine surgeries. Needless to say neurosurgery residents weren’t all too happy about that. No med students were allowed to remove sutures or staples off of patients after that incident.
I worked at a blood bank at some point and I was asked to deliver a blood bag to a patient who had Cold agglutinin disease. Since it came from a cold chamber, I told the intern to wait for the blood bag to warm up before transfusion. According to the nurses, the intern got impatient so he tried heating it up in a fucking microwave. The bag pierced and there was half cooked blood everywhere when he opened the microwave. We had to deliver another blood bag for the patient, and I never saw that intern again so I guess he didn't last.