Have any med students listen to you with a stethoscope?

I went to an urgent care one time because I had pink eye. I just wanted some antibiotic eye drops. I sat in the exam room for a half hour. no doctor. then I get a knock. It’s a med student. She explains the doctor is late and asks if she can talk to me. I say ok.

She listens to my heart and lungs. Then asks me a ton of questions that have nothing to do with my eye. Then she left.

I guess she was practicing something?

Finally after another half hour the the doctor comes in with the student. Looks at my eye, writes the RX for the drops and I leave.

It was a strange visit.

I’ve had med students observing me a few times during emergency room visits. Only a couple of them were able to actually figure out what was happening. The rest had to be corrected by an experienced and competent doctor. They have listened to my chest, and asked questions. Beyond that, nothing else. I didn’t feel comfortable with their lack of knowledge, especially at that level. The supervising physician should not have allowed them to play guessing games with the patient. I also don’t trust nurse practitioners or physician’s assistants. They may get it right, but my experience has been mixed.

Never listened to with a stethoscope. I have had students present during my physical exams. On two different occasions the doctor has had a female student following him. On each occasion they stood quietly and just observed both times they were very professional and polite making me feel comfortable with having to expose myself in front of them. I had a student present during a EKG once she actually put the leads on as she was instructed by the senior tech. And a IV put in once by a student, that did not work out so well!!! I was bloody, bleeding and bruised where she missed my vien a couple of times. She and the nurse both apologized very sincerely. I told them both I would survive and that it wasn't that big of deal she has to learn some how. I did sign a waiver once before my colonoscopy giving my permission for a student to perform the procedure under a doctor's supervision. This I did not really feel comfortable with but then I didn't object either. Not sure what would have happened if I would have refused.

I was a medical student many decades ago. Medical school is 4 years. The first two are pretty much immersion in basic sciences: Anatomy, physiology, pathology, biochemistry, microbiology etc. Although the second year had a class on physical examination and in addition to lectures we practiced on one another and, to a limited extent on some very brave volunteer patients, we had little patient contact. What we did have was learning which end of the stethoscope went in our ears and how to just talk to patients, all strangers, about intimate things and how to put our hands on them without feeling totally flustered ourselves. That's actually quite difficult to learn. In the 3rd and 4th years we begin to learn to get a history and perform a physical exam. But it's still learning how to do the exam rather than think about disease states and interpret physical findings.

My male cousin listened to my heartbeat with his stethoscope when he was studying medicine

I had to attend our local hospital cardiology department a couple of years ago and the consultant cardiologist had a student shadowing him and he let her examine me so he could assess her, needless to say she was very thorough.!!, and she was a beautiful Chinese girl.😊