Guest medwant2b Posted April 20, 2002 Report Share Posted April 20, 2002 After starting with a 'tell me about yourself' question things shifted to my essay. In it I had written about a paper that surveyed medical school students at U of T and asked if they had been asked to do unethical things in med school. Specifically, the faculty member asked me if I could give an example of an unethical situation that a med student might face. I came up with something and he then basically turned it around on me--and asked me to answer it. When I had fumbled through that he came up with another scenario--and just before asking it jokely asked the med student if he can be tough on me... The second ethical case dealt with an elderly WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) who came to emergency. He cannot go pee and refuses to be treated by the young female resident (or med student) of colour. He said 'you're the director of medical services and have to deal with it.' We discussed it for a bit. At some point he said 'I'd tell him [the elderly man] we don't accommodate racists.' That bothered me a lot. Especially when considering he said-- treatment (of the elderly man) would involve the resident (or med student) asking him all about his peeing habits and probably sticking a probe into his penis to get to the bladder. I said 'I wouldn't accuse the patient of racism, only --say 'we cannot accommodate your wishes for logistical reasons.'' Generally, the faculty member seemed to be very nice --but this I thought was just damn inflammatory... if not insensitive to the patient's discomfort with the situation. I didn't say it then... but now I'm thinking of another situation. Say a young woman is scheduled for her first gynecological exam--would you accuse her of sexism if she says she doesn't want to be treated by a male physician? I'm wondering if there is a double standard here. Also, even if you're pretty sure the guy is really a racist --is it really going to help him or you if you call him what he is? I don't. Any one... any thoughts? I think I nailed a few questions... but also got nailed on a few. I don't think I did particularly well. If the above sounds a bit disorganized... I wouldn't be surprised. My brain feels like mush at the moment. Best of luck to those that still have to do their interview... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest abcd Posted April 21, 2002 Report Share Posted April 21, 2002 I don't think that the refusal to be seen by a male OB/GYN vs a female one can be compared to refusal to be seen by a physician that is of an ethnic minority. The first is based on comfort level - most women simply feel less awkward with a female OB/GYN than a male. This has nothing to do with "sexism" - believing that a female would do a superior job to a male - but the fact that the whole OB/GYN experience is probably one of the most private/intimate medical experiences one can go through, and being comfortable is very important. The refusal to be seen by a minority physician is just blatant ignorance, and I say bravo to the doc who tells the patient that the hospital doesn't accomodate racists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest medwant2b Posted April 21, 2002 Report Share Posted April 21, 2002 I've thought some more about this. I disagree. Calling someone a racist is serious stuff. --- If the patient isn't racist it is an incredible insult. I don't think it is possible to defend a false allegation of this sort. Extreme caution is important here-- it would be morally reprehensible to falsely accuse someone of racism that is sick, vulnerable and embarrassed about their situation. --- But... he is racist! If the patient is truly a racist I don't think you're going to change their mind by telling them so. Also, more likely that not they probably don't consider themselves racist and will get annoyed at you. Them getting annoyed isn't going to make them feel any better. Also, it isn't going to help you fulfill what I believe is your moral duty-- which is to work toward their best interest (treatment). --- As a physician, I don't think it is your job to straighten-out old-fashioned and myopic political views-- you just shouldn't accommodate them. Also, IMHO the best way to change somebody's mind about something like that is to try and get them to interact with those people. Calling a patient sexist, racist or both IMHO is likely to make them feel worse and more likely to storm out of the hospital (to the detriment of their health) than back down and accept the care from the female physician of colour. medwant2b Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest valani Posted April 21, 2002 Report Share Posted April 21, 2002 You're right about this. It is not your job to try and change the patient's opinions, but they should not be accomodated. The question here is: Is it a violation of the patient's rights to not cater to this opinion? Nope. They may have a right to Have a racist opinion, but they sure as hell don't have a right act on it in a public healthcare setting. That is, by definition, discrimination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest my experience Posted April 21, 2002 Report Share Posted April 21, 2002 i too had my interview this past weekend. unfortunately i don't think it went very well. i was discouraged as they asked only one question that relates to me and why i want to study medicine - isn't this the focus of the interview? the rest of my questions were ethical and current event questions. the interview was really short, only 30 min - i think this was because it was early on sunday morning and they weren't quite into it yet, or they were very unimpressed they felt no reason to continue. damn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest worrying Posted April 22, 2002 Report Share Posted April 22, 2002 i don't think that a 30 min interview means they didn't like you. it could mean that you answered all your questions efficiently without babbling on too much, or they didn't feel the need to "challenge" you further because you answered previous questions to their liking. as for only asking one question about you, don't they have all that info from your essay already? for my interview, they seemed to have everything i submitted in the application, including my marks, right in front of them. so don't beat yourself up.. i'm sure if people look long and hard enough, they'll find SOMETHING about their interview that didn't go perfectly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bad hombre Posted April 22, 2002 Report Share Posted April 22, 2002 when was the last time you tried changing a senior citizen's mind? often if it's very difficult, if not impossible, to alter the opinion of someone that age, especially when it concern a topic such as racism. i say you would be better off trying to reason with the man for a couple of minutes (telling him no other doctors are available etc.). If this happened to fail, then I'd advise you to go find a WASP male doctor who could better meet the patient's "requirements". if you were to just kick the guy out, what end would that accomplish? moral integrity? hardly. you would be hurting the patient and further worsening his prejudices (and the prejudice of anyone who hears his story) oh and about the interview, they're probably just trying to scare you. a lot of people leave feeling bad about it and then receive an acceptance. peace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kjhj Posted April 22, 2002 Report Share Posted April 22, 2002 I only had two questions that were personal...the rest were ethics and scenario type questions...there were a few main themes and whenever I gave an answer the interviewer would just make the scenario even more "ethically-challenging"...nothing about current news...from the people I talked to beforehand I was ready for a relaxing conversation Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest my experience Posted April 22, 2002 Report Share Posted April 22, 2002 thanx worrying. at this point i just want to forget all about it until i get "the letter". best of luck to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jlo Posted April 22, 2002 Report Share Posted April 22, 2002 Dear kjhj, Some interviewers can be really mean with the ethical questions and just not let you off the hook even you give them an answer and stick to it... I mean if you haven't changed your answer on the fifth or sixth re-hashing of the same problem then what is the point of the questioning... let's just move on. I think it just reflects the interviewer's lack of preparation, i.e. that they didn't read your essay so they trucked out last week's episode of ER and beat it to death. The student interviewing me seemed to be a little annoyed with the staff person during my interview. They tried asking me some different questions but the staff would always bring it back to their topic and the student I think just gave up... I feel for you though... good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest YongQ Posted April 23, 2002 Report Share Posted April 23, 2002 Those are pretty strange interview experiences. I remember last year, the U of T interview for me was the most relaxed out of all of them (UBC, McGill, Calgary). But it's true, you never can tell an interviewer's impression of you, so don't beat yourself up about it... in a month you'll know. YONGQ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest T Posted April 29, 2002 Report Share Posted April 29, 2002 Have any of you had interviews for jobs? I mean real jobs ie consulting interviews or other career jobs on campus for graduating students. They grill the crap out of you, but you are always left feeling that they were very very professional, organized and knew their stuff inside out. I think maybe the people involved in medschool interviews should get some training or something to avoid all of the fumbling and retardedness you hear about in those interviews. Another idea maybe to have 2 or 3 rounds. Ie alot of job interviews I had conducted a first round on campus and weeded out the obvious chumps. They then had the second and third rounds in their headquarters to really hone in one key differences between star candidates. It allowed for more organization and isolating subtle differences among the group of potential candidates. It seems med school interviews are more of a freeferall with students asking anything that pops into their heads and faculty just trying to annoy the crap out of the person. There should also be a standard set of questions that everyone gets asked to allow for comparability. ie some people get ethical questions, some get none etc etc etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest strider2004 Posted April 29, 2002 Report Share Posted April 29, 2002 T, The interview for school is a bit different than the interview for a job. When applying for a job, the interviewers want to know how you will perform in certain situations. The questions are based on your expected skill level on graduation -if they go on campus recruiting computer engineers, they're gonna ask you resource allocation questions to see how quick you are. There will also be a few questions thrown in too see how you would interact with the group dynamic. It's a bit different for med school because people come from very different backgrounds. We don't always ask performance-related questions because almost everything is retrained in med school so knowledge isn't expected. The interview is mroe organised than you think. Each interview team has a set of goals that they want to accomplish and each team's scores are usually normalized. The questions are probably consistent within each team. It doesn't really matter if you get an ethics question when your friend doesn't because they're not being graded by the same interview team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest T Posted April 29, 2002 Report Share Posted April 29, 2002 Yeah makes sense I have to be honest, I haven't had a med school interview and so I was just going by what people say about the interviews here on the forum. I suppose alot of what is written here perhaps is just cadidates releasing a little "heat" after some grueling interveiws. Interestingly during a lot of campus recruiting interveiws we were faced with lots of ethical questions, current event questions and the typical scenario questions "stranded on a desert island what three people would you bring", how would your friends describe you etc etc. So I think at the heart of any interview I guess there is the focus on getting to understand what makes an interviewee tic from all angles. Another question I had for you is the way a candidate should behave during the interview. Typically for the job interviews I had, the employers loved to see candidates that loved to sell themselves and were assertive with their answers/beliefs etc. Does the same hold true for med school interviews or should one stick to a more compassionate approach. Thanks again T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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