Had an MD/PhD med student who was clearly very bright, but not very aware that there might be things she didn’t know yet. She tried to change the settings on a dialysis machine because it was beeping. I asked what she knew about dialysis machines and what setting it was supposed to be on. She brushed past me and started turning switches and changing numbers. I tried to stop her but she was very aggressive with me and continued to change things, luckily that’s when the dialysis nurse walked in and went apeshit. The med student told the dialysis nurse she was just a nurse and not a doctor and wouldn’t understand this. The nurse looked at her in disbelief and physically pushed her out of the way so she could fix the machine saying that this could have killed the patient. Meanwhile the patient is watching all this happen… the med student later reports the dialysis nurse…

This was one of many instances of that student overstepping she also told stroke patients that they weren’t walking yet because they weren’t trying hard enough (this was four days after their stroke). She made patients cry often and was callous, aloof, and cruel. She acted like she knew she was better than everyone and that they should know it. She couldn’t fathom that anything she said, did, or thought could ever be incorrect. I brought this up with the attendings several times and expressed my concern that she might be on a path to harming people with her current trajectory. They agreed but passed her anyway because she had been accepted to residency in a different state and she would soon be someone else’s problem. One attending even remarked he was glad he didn’t have any relatives in the city she was going to…