[I decided to write this now because my mood was becoming happy again after watching 3 episodes of the Simpsons. Good thing I remembered what happened this morning coz it needs some documentation...]
Just when I thought that I was growing to like my OB rotation, it turns around and punches me in the face. If anger had a scale, 10 being the most anger a man can ever attain, it would have been an outright 10.
I am not the smartest person in the world, but I DO study. We have an announced quiz every Friday, but last friday it got postponed to today. It was all about Sterilization and Contraception, and all of the questions are supposed to come from William’s Obstetrics 22nd edition. I got myself a copy a week before the quiz and read the whole thing. Being a veteran quiz-taker, I knew what kind of questions residents are supposed to be asking us at intern-level. Management, most commons, Risk factors, Complications, all in multiple choice, identification or even enumeration.
What is the objective in giving interns quizzes? It is to assess if one has a full grasp of the topic in question, right? As much as I wanted to memorize the whole 2 chapters I focused on the above-mentioned essentials.
Trust me when I tell you that THAT QUIZ WAS THE MOST HORRIBLE, MOST UNFAIR, and MOST NON-YIELD QUIZ EVER!
The first was matching type. I’ve answered a lot of matching type questions but not one that looked like this:
Match the following contraceptives to the lowest possible failure rate it can incur (may repeat the letters)
1. Oral Contraceptive Pills A. 0.1%
2. Condoms B. 0.2%
3. Mini-pill C. 0.3%
4. Emergency Contraception D. <75% reduced risk
5. IUD E. 0.4%
6. Injectables F. 0.5%
7. Female Sterilization G. 0.01%
8. Male Sterilization H. 0.02%
9. Withdrawal method I. 0.5%
WHAT KIND OF A QUIZ IS THAT?! All that reading, and I was supposed to just memorize the percentages?!
Then it went on to a quiz type like this:
Write T if the contraceptive is contraindicated with the following conditions and F if it is not. (WHA?!)
Heart Disease
__ Condom
__ IUD
__ OCPs
__ Minipill
This went on for conditions such as heavy smoker, thyroid disease, etc. Although it seemed better, still one could have written a far more superior quiz. I am not angry because I know I am going to get low grades, but because I studied so hard and had to get such an inferior line of questioning.
The worst part about it is when the resident who gave the exam went up to one of my co-interns and said:
“Didn’t I tell you guys to study on the lowest failure rates? Didn’t you tell your co-interns?”
Ahh… so apparently she thought we would get good grades because she leaked the question out. Well, for one, that intern didn’t tell me that the questions would be that way, and two, I study not just for quizzes but also for future care for my patients.
Again, another kind of teacher that doesn’t know how to teach. Another teacher I refuse to become. You teach for your students to learn, is that so hard?
And that is why I was so mad starting from 9 am this morning… As I stormed out of the conference room, I could feel the confusion and anger of most of my cointerns as well. As I made my daily rounds that morning, I saw one of my surgery residents making rounds as well. She smiled at me, and I immediately begged her to take me back to Surgery…
I didn’t come all the way to the UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES to take such exams that don’t even help me with the future boards…
Speaking of quality of education in UP, we also are students in charge of patients in the Gyne department right? Well, I heard from one of my cointerns that they don’t even let you scrub in in the surgery, but they just call on you to pass the specimen to the histopathology department…
WHERE IS THE DAMN LEARNING?!
I probably got to learn more about OB in DLSU than this… I got more hands-on in the surgeries…
I try to calm myself by remembering what my Dad said… You don’t expect them to teach you directly, you learn by yourself, read by yourself, teach yourself…
Fantastic… maybe I should have been home-schooled instead…
Great quiz Ma’am, looking forward to the next quizzes…
6 WEEKS TO GO BEFORE END OF OB-GYN ROTATION.
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