• What Students Liked
• What Students Wish Was Different

What Students Liked

• Dr. W showed great enthusiasm for student teaching. He always took time to answer my questions and explain things to me.
• Dr. S provided me with many opportunities to see patients before he did. He was very willing to answer questions and came up with interesting questions for me to find out about on my own.
• Dr. S was a great preceptor. One of her best qualities was being sure to discuss the plan for the day with me upon arrival as far as which patients would be good for me to see, and then communicating this with the MA's. This organized approach to the day assisted in my ability to prepare for and interview each patient.
• Dr. C did a great job of allowing me to participate in patient care. He allowed me to present the assessment and plan to patients with whom I felt comfortable doing so. He also allowed me to help assist in some simple procedures.
• He was very good at teaching in between patients and chose a topic to teach me about, Very informative and very easy to work with. Allowed me to talk to patients first which was quite nice and also allowed me to present the patient to him.
• Definitely challenged me and taught me new things. She followed up on things that I was supposed to be learning about and made sure I had a good grasp on things we discussed. She was willing to help me improve my PE without making me feel foolish for asking for help.
• Dr. C made me feel like he enjoyed working with me. He provided great opportunities for me to learn with his patients. He comfortably challenged me and provided great feedback. He also served as a great model of a physician that combines academic, community and clinic work.
• Dr. Z was a great preceptor! One of her best qualities was her attention to discussing specific learning points that may have been brought up by a case. This helped guide my learning, as well as make sure I was getting the most out of each clinic experience as far as take home points for bread & butter topics.
• Dr. T gave me the opportunity to establish rapport with patients, especially his obstetrical patients who would have weekly appointments. This was great to see how patients responded to me the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time I saw them as opposed to just seeing once, and I was able to build relationships with patients. He also was very willing to answer my questions but also to ask me questions and challenge my knowledge. One last thing that I appreciated was that I was in the room when he talked to patients as well, and it is good to see what different physicans emphasize with patients.
• She encouraged me to learn independently, but also gave me feedback and guided my learning. I liked getting called into rooms to hear murmurs and other interesting findings if I wasn't present; it made me feel like I was an important part of the clinic and that my learning was a priority.
• He really worked to make sure he developed me as a student. I could tell he really wanted to make sure that I was learning things that would serve me well in my career. He challenged me to think of what I would do if it was my patient and I was making the final decision. He did this in a fun and engaging way. Even though he wasn't listed as one of my original preceptors he gladly allowed me to follow him and really took an interest in me and my growth.
• Dr. C is the model physician and an invaluable asset to the UW Madison program and the Wisconsin healthcare community. His compassion is unsurpassed, and his undying enthusiasm for medicine is evident in everything he does. I feel honored to have learned from Dr. C, and if i had to identify one strength as his greatest, it would be the value of treating every patient as if they were "one of the family."
• Dr. F is an excellent, caring Pediatrician. She is one of the finest doctors I've worked with. She demonstrates genuine concern for her patients, and establishes excellent rapport with them as well. She is a very thorough, caring physician. She goes the extra mile to take the time to provide important counseling to the children and to the parents, and, from a student perspective, this type of straightforward, essential communication was very valuable to observe. She welcomed my questions, and provided helpful guidance. She is an excellent role model, physician and preceptor.
• Great patient education and compassion for his patients. Showed me how to use resources to deal with problems not frequently encountered, and to make sure that we were staying abreast of the latest recommendations with common problems.
• Provided me with plenty of autonomy, which I really enjoyed. Great role model for any physician, not just family practice. The whole clinic was great. I know (and they all knew) that I wasn't going in to family practice, but I gained a lot of valuable experiences from the patients and staff at this clinic. The physicians and staff were excellent and great role models for me.
• Dr. D's greatest strength was his ability to let me think through problems on my own. He would always give me a chance to make my own plan for patients and provide feedback on things he would do differently or change. I appreciated every opportunity I had to work with him. His patients seem to like and respect him.
• Dr. Y was amazing! I can't begin to think of the one greatest strength he has...he has so many strengths! He is very intelligent and super enthusiastic; his patients adore him!! It is refreshing to see somebody that practices clinical medicine the way it is supposed to be practiced!! I had been feeling discouraged after not liking some previous rotations, but Dr. Y did an amazing job of renewing my desire to be a physician and my faith in medicine in general!! Also, he let me do a lot! And I learn by doing! He was encouraging and made me feel like I would be a good doctor! He was fun to work with and everyone who worked at his clinic was fun and eager to help and friendly! This was my favorite rotation yet!
• Dr. K kept me on my toes, but in a friendly way. He quizzed me on various topics and encouraged me read up on topics I was not familiar with. He observed me doing the history and physical multiple times, always giving useful feedback. Even when the diagnosis was fairly straightforward he encouraged me to always think about the whole differential so that more serious diagnoses won't be missed.
• Dr. G was a phenomenal teacher. He gave me a level of responsibility with patients that I had not yet experienced. The autonomy he gave me included determining labs patients needed at their next visit and when to schedule their next appointment. It gave me the opportunity to negotiate with patients about reasonable time frames for accomplishing various work ups and studies. It also forced me to think carefully about what labs patients needed to have monitored, how often, and exactly what information we would learn from each lab we ordered. He also gave me as much time as I needed with each patient, so I never felt that time pressure interfered with my ability to be thorough and learn as much as possible from each encounter. Finally, he was very consistent about asking me for my opinion of what the diagnosis was and what I wanted to do as far as further work up and treatment before he told me his thoughts. He respected the opinions I gave, especially when we were in the room with the patient, which helped me to build confidence and feel that the patients had confidence in me. Additionally, he provided primary literature articles that were relevant to patients we had seen to help me direct my reading and learning outside the clinic. Working with Dr. G was an exceptional experience.

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What Students Wish Was Different

1. Observe me more/provide more feedback re: my physical exam skills & histories
   • Let me know if I'm not doing something up to expectation, such as history that's not pertinent or physical exam that's not properly done, etc.
   • The only thing I could think of is to have more instances of observing students doing histories and physical exams because the instances when we did that I thought were very useful
2. Provide/increase feedback
   • The only thing I didn't get much of was specific criticism or feedback. Hopefully this meant that I did everything perfectly :), but I doubt that.
   • I would have liked some more feedback about my interaction with patients, how I was doing physical exams, etc. It would have been nice if he could have observed me doing these things so I could know how I was doing.
   • Provide more constructive feedback even if it is negative. I'd rather you point out my shortcomings now so that I can work on them and improve them than to believe that I am the best thing since sliced bread only to find out that I need some improvement later on.
3. Let me see more patients on my own (autonomy)
   • He could allow students to take an independent role in the clinic, such as doing patient interviews and presentations.
   • Let students go in with patients on their own more, particularly after trust has been gained with the preceptor and the student. More autonomy would have been beneficial, however, it was early in the rotation schedule and I didn't know that much.
4. Let me (or watch me) present assessment and/or plan
   • I didn't get much practice presenting assessments and plans to patients. This was a product of the routine the preceptor and I happened to fall into, but I think the preceptor would have been open to modifying that if I had asked.
   • Encourage more differential/assessment and plan development from me, and allow me to deliver these things to the patients. I felt very timid for a time about offering my opinion as I wasn't sure what her expectations about this were. I guess a brief discussion on my first day with her about her expectations, and follow up on how those might be changing with my learning would be good.
   • Encourage me to develop my own diagnoses and plans. Be more involved when he was with the patient as well. After I met with the patient and he came in, I felt like an observer only and no as much a part of the team. Otherwise, he was great and a very good teacher.
5. Provide me with more hands on experiences
   • I felt like I got to do a lot of procedures and I felt good about how many I got to do, but more hands on is always better.
   • Involve students in tasks such as answering patient calls and making decisions about med refills, that are less obvious tasks of a clinician but still potential learning experiences
6. Improve Logistics/ time management/busy clinic
   • Clinic was usually busy and hectic, but there were a few times where I felt uncomfortable asking questions because clinic was so busy and I felt that there was not enough time. By the end of the day, when there was some free time, it felt strange asking questions about patients from hours ago, so I would usually just look up the answer to my question when I got home. I am unsure if there is a way to remedy this, since it is more of a clinic and logistic issue, but it might be helpful to take one or two minutes after a patient to discuss the patient before moving on to the next patient.
7. Challenge my learning/medical knowledge (more teaching)
   • A minor suggestion would be to use the student as more of a resource for answering clinical questions, especially when there's down time between patients. Students are usually good at looking up information, and it makes us feel more useful in the clinic!
   • You are a wonderful teacher. One thing to suggest is to ask, "What do you want to do?" at the end of my report on a patient. You did do this on occasion, especially when it was a good learning point. Other times, perhaps we were behind and there wasn't time, or the plan was obvious, but still spending at least 10-20 seconds asking this question would be very beneficial to all students' learning.
8. Define your expectations of me
   • Talk about expectations on the first meeting. I worked with so many preceptors that it would be nice for the preceptor to inform the student what they expect from the beginning. Also, the preceptor has not worked with many third year students and informed me he wasn't aware of the expectations of third year students. This may be something that the education office can provide to him.
   • Once again, as for all my preceptors, it was often difficult to glean what exactly they expected from me in terms of performance. More specifics would have been helpful, but great teacher overall