How to impress your attendings

Last updated: June 19, 2025

Definitions & Key takeaways

There are a few key things that you can do to impress your attendees and make sure that they remember you. First, always be on time for your appointments and be prepared with all of your paperwork. Second, ensure that you actively listen and pay attention when they are talking, and ask questions if you need help understanding something. Third, be proactive in your care and let them know if you need anything or have any questions. Finally, always treat the staff with empathy, respect, and courtesy.

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All right, how are you feeling today? Hey guys, I'm uh re I'm a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Stanford.

I'm the Chief medical officer at Osmosis. And I wanna talk today a little bit about attending and three of my tips on how to impress your attendings as perspective.

Obviously, I went through medical school residency and I've been a fellow and I'm now an attending, I've been attending for many, many years uh about a decade.

So, uh when I was going through, I always thought of uh impressing my attendings is a bit of a likability game. And the game was uh how quick I could get my attending to like me cause obviously I have just a few weeks and I wanted to get it done.

And so I thought OK, II have to be really gregarious and social and all this kind of stuff. And um and, and my reasons were I wanted to get uh into AOA, you know, I'll be honest, II thought that would be uh a boost from my residency application.

Uh If you don't know what AOA is, it's Alpha Omega Alpha and it's a, it's a society that a lot of medical schools in the US subscribe to and they get 10% of their students into that society.

So I thought I wanna be part of AOA. And um and, and actually in, in reviewing for this video, I was actually doing a little bit of reading and it turns out that AOA has changed over, over the years in terms of like who uh goes into it.

And about 13% about a decade ago of AOA members would ensure the lifestyle friendly choices uh for residency. And now that's gone up to about 33%.

So it seems like there's some sort of correlation between being in the AOA and, and pursuing one of those life uh residencies.

And I think that's because people basically see it as one more thing to boost their residency application. So that's kind of what my logic was back then.

Today, my, my view is quite different, you know, in the sense of I see um being an effective member of the team is something everyone should aspire to uh because it helps take care of patients.

And so I want all my medical studentss to, to kind of wanna be uh more effective on the team. And that's what my three tips are about.

So let's just get started. First tip.

Here we go. First tip is empathize and observe.

So, you know, a lot of stuff is going on in the hospital, you're a medical student it's really, really important to empathize with not just your, your uh residents and attendings, but empathize with the other clinical staff.

You know, what is your physical therapist or nurse or pharmacist thinking? Uh what are they kind of focused on and, and mostly empathize with your patient?

I mean, frankly on, on your team, a medical student is the closest to being a part of that um that world and they thinking about kind of what is the patient thinking about.

So that's, that's my, you know, my, my, my first point is empathize, think about what are their conversations about, what are people talking about?

What are they worried about? You know, a classic example is you work all day doing a discharge and then you walk in to tell a patient they're going home that day and you never mentioned to them that they're going home.

So they haven't arranged a ride, they don't necessarily know where they're gonna spend that night. You know, if they're staying with friends and family, they're not sure, you know, whose bed they're crashing on.

Um And, and they don't have kind of anything in place to go home. So, and maybe the other members of the medical team haven't thought about it either.

So making sure you communicate and empathize is really, really important. It kind of helps make everything kind of go smoother when you can kind of see things from different perspectives.

So that's the first kind of key point and it, it kind of lays the foundation for tip number two. So tip number two hustle like just hustling and everything you can do.

So obviously you wanna make sure that you uh are prompt, you're on time, you're not late to things. But when you get to places, are you an effective helper?

Do you need to be coached or constantly told? Like, oh, do this or do that or do you just kind of observe, empathize and just naturally kinda slide in and start helping you out right away?

I mean, I think of a dinner party where, where some of the guests are just naturally kind of cleaning up at the end of the dinner party if you're hosting.

That's awesome. Right.

That's just really, really helpful and so be that kind of AAA person on the warts when you're there, just kind of notice problems, notice things that are going on, notice conversations and then just kind of quietly help, don't have to make yourself really known about it or people will notice themselves and it's always better if people just kind of notice you rather than you kind of flaunting all the, all the wonderful things that you're doing.

I think the thing that people freak out about is, oh, I don't know what to say. I don't know, always have an answer for everything.

What if I get pimped and, and that's completely ok on this, every attending will tell you this, they really don't care if people know things or don't know things the whole point of, of medical school and residency is to learn.

So it's ok not to know things, but just what's not ok is if you don't hustle and look things up or, or say, hey, I'll get back to you with that or, or come back and, and be uh honest about the things that you've done or, or, or haven't done, you know, in, in your time on the warts.

So tip number three is making sure that you speak up. And this is the hardest thing like making sure that when you do speak, so you've already observed and empathized, you've already kind of hustled and maybe done some background reading or, or work.

But when you're about to speak up, make sure what you're saying is relevant. Like the last thing people wanna do is kind of waste their time.

And so when, when a, a medical student of mine or a resident of mine speaks up, I really think, OK, I II hope what you're about to say is really relevant.

You know, it's not off point, you're not talking about a case that, that we're not talking about right now or some issue that's tangential to the kind of core issue.

So making sure that what you say and how you, how you say it is really, really specific. So for example, you know, let's say I'm I'm presenting a case, you could say.

Well, I've got this six year old girl, uh, she's got, uh, conjunctivitis. She's got a red, kind of, uh, chapped lips.

Uh, you know, a really bright red tongue. She's got a big lymph node down here.

She's got a bit of a rash and kind of swollen fingers. What is that case about, uh, versus, um, you know, this, this, uh, case presentation dragging on where you talk about their gastric reflux and twisted ankle from a year ago and, and, uh, asthma things that are not pertinent to exactly why they're there that day.

So, you know, be, be careful even when you do speak up about making sure you, you speak in a way that's parsimonious to the point and relevant to the conversation so that people know, ok, this person kind of knows what the point is here.

So those kinds of ideas are really, really critical and, and I'll, I'll leave with kind of, uh, another story which is also don't be afraid to speak up.

You know, I'll, I'll share a real story for myself. I was, uh, taking care of a patient.

They had just gotten wheeled back from surgery and they were on monitors and, um, and the code gets called because they're, they're flat lining and it looks really terrible.

And, um, and everyone's kind of rushing around and I noticed as a medical student, I noticed that their monitors were not plugged in, like literally the plug was just not in, it was, it was out and I didn't say anything cause I thought, oh I'm just a med student.

I don't wanna. And maybe like two minutes later, one of the nurses said, hey guys, guys, guys, it's not a code.

The mars just not plugged in. We're not getting a good read here.

So they plugged it in and everything was fine. It was totally benign.

But I could have said that and I didn't and I didn't because I was scared, right? So it's also important, especially in critical situations to speak up because uh you might think I'm just a med student, you know, II what can I possibly offer?

Especially in this high stakes situation of a code. But if you notice something, say something and so, you know, I'll leave you with that.

You know, again, the three tips, make sure that you empathize that you observe what's going on. Um Number two, make sure you hustle num number three, make sure that you speak up and, and don't be afraid to speak up and speak up in a way that's relevant to the team.

So again, I want to see your uh comments uh about what your tips are for impressing your attending or more specifically how to be relevant and, and effective on the team.

Thanks guys. Bye.

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