#studying for it is taking away from me studying for FM boards and actual usable medicine

[prince-liest]

Our usual "one attending per week" schedule on inpatient has been knocked out of wack because one of our attendings had to take a different job recently, but I finally had an attending for a full 7 days this week which means ✨feedback✨!

Every time I go into a little feedback session, I'm constantly overtaken by this fear that they're going to reveal to me that I'm secretly falling behind academically and need to get my shit together. Part of this, recently, has been because we had a really chaotic and rough first week of inpatient, and I had one day when I came to rounds late and genuinely was unprepared in my presentations to the point of borderline not knowing what a liver is. This negative feedback I fear never actually happens (not even on that terrible Friday), yet the fear persists. The bad news is that this attending, who is turning 40 this year, revealed to me that he also still gets imposter syndrome, so possibly we are just stuck like this forever, hahaha.

BUT! Consistently overall and on this occasion as well, I've been told that I'm in a good place in terms of medical knowledge and clinical skills, and that both my curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, as well as my clear enjoyment of my job on both the inpatient and outpatient sides, set me up for success and also make me an enjoyable person to work with, which is definitely something that brings me joy to hear. I also feel much, much better about this inpatient rotation than my last one - medicine is a great deal of fun once you're no longer afraid of accidentally killing someone by giving them a Tylenol!

I think my main actual concern in residency is Level 3, the third board exam I'm taking in March. I'm...not really worried about my actual end-of-residency Family Medicine boards, because those are going to be testing me on the things I am learning and also using in practice. Level 3, on the other hand, often asks delightful things like "Which of the following five gene mutations (which are all named by a random combination of 3-4 numbers and letters) is responsible for this patient's presentation?" which is an Achilles heel for someone like me whose greatest weakness is rote memorization of random, mostly irrelevant facts.

Anyway, it's really reassuring to me that on the front of, like, things that I think are valuable for my career as a physician, I am doing well. My attending actually said with regards to the bi-annual review my advisor is supposed to have with me, "Spoiler, everyone in your meeting pretty much agreed that this is an enthusiastic person who enjoys what they're doing and is great to work with."

So, basically: :)