My First Clinical Evaluation

Kendra Campbell -- I spent the past week or so diligently practicing for my upcoming clinical skills assessment. Thus far in medical school, I’ve taken many written multiple choice exams, and Shelf Exams, but I’ve never been tested on actual clinical skills. I was a little nervous that I’d completely freeze up when it was time to be tested, so I tried to practice as much as possible. Eventually, my partner Micah became tired of being percussed, auscultated and poked, so I felt that I was probably prepared enough to pass the exam.

Yesterday morning, I walked into the evaluation room along with seven of my classmates. A patient sat in the middle of the room on the examining table, and a professor and student assistant sat on the other side of the room. We all took our seats, and anxiously waited to get our assignments.

I was second in line to be examined. I walked up to the table in front of the professor and picked an index card randomly from the pile. I was assigned to take the patient’s blood pressure. Yay! I had lucked out and gotten the easiest assignment. I’ve taken blood pressure a bazillion times before in hospitals, so this should be a breeze, I thought.

However, when I approached the patient, I suddenly became overwhelmingly anxious. I realized that my hands were trembling and my face was starting to flush. I went through all the steps, and successfully took the patient’s blood pressure, following all the standard procedures and explaining each step along the way. But the entire time, I was quite nervous and terrified that I’d mess up.

I ended up getting an excellent grade on my performance and I didn’t make a complete fool out of myself, but the experience really got me thinking. I’ve taken blood pressures so many times in my life, that I can’t understand why I was so nervous this time. It’s such an easy procedure, and it should have been no big deal. I think it might have to do with the fact that I’ve always been lower on the totem pole while working in hospitals. If the doctor thought my reported blood pressure reading seemed way off, they’d usually take it again to make sure, because they had the ultimate responsibility for the patient, and not me. The doctor is the one who writes the prescriptions and has to make the important calls.

Now that I’m actually training to be a doctor, I realize that my responsibility to the patient is much higher. I will eventually be making the calls that will affect the course of the patient’s health, instead of just following the orders, and I think that makes me a bit nervous.

I hope that I can learn from this first evaluation, though. Hopefully next time I will feel much more comfortable and relaxed when being evaluated. But it’s nice to at least have this first obstacle out of the way!