Facing Failure in Medical Training

 

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Many of us who go through medical training have had few to no prior experiences with academic failure.  Yet, because studying medicine is different from studying many other subjects, failing in some way during medical training is common.  In medical school and residency the pace at which you are expected to learn material is much faster than for many other academic programs (maybe you’ve heard the comparison to “drinking from a firehose”).  To keep up with that pace you need to figure out the study strategies that work best for you.  Unfortunately there isn’t a one size fits all study plan for medical training, so finding the best plan for yourself may take some trial and error.  If you find that you fail an exam (or even an entire course or rotation) in your training program, please know that you are far from alone.  It doesn’t mean that you won’t graduate or won’t be a good physician.  It may simply mean that you need to use different study strategies or seek assistance with figuring out what to focus on to improve your performance.  Alternatively, it may mean that you faced some unexpected life circumstances that interfered with your studying.  In either scenario I would recommend talking with the appropriate faculty members (academic support person, dean of students, advisor, etc.) to figure out the best way forward.

A time during medical training when I was in danger of failing was during my first inpatient medicine rotation of residency.  The attending physician for the third week of the rotation pulled me into her office in the middle of the week and told me, “I don’t think you’re where you need to be” and was concerned that I would fail the rotation if during the remainder of it my performance didn’t improve.  To be clear, she was still supportive of my education even as she delivered this feedback and noted that the concern was primarily my ability to use the system and provide a good oral presentation of a patient case, rather than a lack of medical knowledge.  Not being the most tech savvy person, I was having some difficulty learning how to use the electronic systems, so early on in my intern year I was not very able to put medical plans into action, even though I had learned a lot about medicine during medical school.  I also had not had much experience working in a residency setting, where formal presentations of patient cases were expected during rounds each day.

As hard as the attending physician’s feedback was to hear, I did my best to take it to heart.  I knew that my only hope of passing the rotation was learning from the feedback and doing my best to improve over the remaining 1.5 weeks of the rotation.  My upper level residents helped me learn the everyday work routine, and I took extra time outside of work to write reminders of it to myself.  I also practiced writing out what I would say for a typical oral presentation so I could become better at doing that during rounds.  The challenge of work remained, but my performance improved enough to pass the rotation.  To this day I can see that what really allowed me to succeed was taking feedback seriously and figuring how to improve.  Even if I’d failed the rotation, that lesson still would have stuck with me, and I would have still used it to ultimately complete my training.

If you find yourself currently or potentially facing failure in your medical training, I want you to know that you are not alone.  Countless trainees before you have struggled, yet gone on to become excellent healthcare practitioners.  As long as you are open to feedback and keep learning, you will eventually succeed.  Even if that requires repeating a course, repeating a rotation, or even repeating an entire year of medical school, as long as you can keep going you will eventually achieve your goals.  Any amount of progress, no matter how small, gets you closer to success.  Failure does not have to be the end of your story.  You can use it as a stepping stone to success if you are willing to learn from it