What makes a good medical student?

In Manchester, we have to fill in the same form entitled 'What makes a good medical student?' every year, enlisting five virtues that makes a good medical student. It is to be filed in our portfolio so we can see the changes over the years.

My views have certainly changed especially since I started third year. I personally really like the self-directed learning approach the Manchester adopts, eventhough it really is like DIY medicine (which the medical school has denied time and again). They say they monitor our learning but I beg to differ. There is no one to tell me if I am going to the ward often enough. When tutors have to fill in feedback forms at the end of the firm attachment they just write a few generic positive words and the words are more or less the same with my other groupmates who goes to the ward not even nearly as often as I do. Those tutors who had filled in my forms had never really watched me talk to patient and observe my clinical skills. Student support, they say, is there. But getting an appointment with the dean last term is like having to beg for his time, so I just didn't bother. I hated that aspect of things.

Yet, I am happy. I get to spend as much time doing whatever I want. In a week, we generally have 2-3 days of spare time. I can play with sutures and airways in the skills lab, work in the ward (which is my favourite), go to theatre, sign up to clinics or sleep in bed. While most of my groupmates have always opted to have a lay in and leave at the earliest opportunity, I always make it a point to spend some time in the ward doing some 'self-directed learning'. Sometimes it's shit but at other times staying late is well worth it.

I'm a little uncomfortable with many of my groupmates who always expect to be 'taught' formally before trying to learn things themselves. ECG for example - almost every patient in my ward has one done as they are being admitted. But you would wonder why my groupmates, after four weeks being attached to the ward, still struggle with reporting a simple ECG. Whenever asked a interpret an ECG, the most typical response from my groupmates will be 'umm, we haven't been taught how to read ECG'. Everyday, when fazed with new things, all I hear is 'We haven't learnt neuro', 'We are not in the GI module', 'We haven't been taught cardiovascular examination' etc etc. It really gets on my nerves! Even with things that we've done for a thousand times already, I still hear them say 'We haven't been taught to interpret ABG' - O yes, you bloody well have! They would literally wait for a lecture or an teaching session to be arranged so they can be officially taught. That makes me feel nauseous. Why can't people be more resourceful themselves? Be curious, make mistakes, ask questions, read up and we wouldn't need any formal teaching at all. After all the learning resources are all around us - fantastic library (including electronic journals), friendly doctors, interesting patients - what more can you ask for?

I don't know why I always seem to not agree with the general attitude of my current and previous groups. I don't think I'm a bad group member. I am certainly a bit of a control freak, but I generally work well in a team. At the end of almost every nursing shift that I do, the sister/staff nurse would tell me to come back and work again. They must have found me helpful. And I seem to get along well with the doctors and other senior medical students on the ward. So I think I must have been ok.

I think I just can't accept the fact we, being a group of motivated high flyers would rely on such a ridiculous amount of spoonfeeding. It just made me think that these people aren't ready to be a student doctor yet - they are just a bunch of naive, immature teenage school kids.