quoted: Forced resignation from residency

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I finished my internship year successfully, but had a personality conflict with new program director during my PGY 2 year. He put me on probation without good reason and I tried to fight back complaining to the head of the department. The program director was pissed off by this and found some reason to force me resign. I have the support from several highly reputed attendings from the department. I have evidence that the program director behaved contrary to due process. Is it worth taking legal action against the program or program director? What’s my chance to get a position in a new program. Thank you for your advice.

This is more up aPD's line of work, but there's probably not enough info you've given us to answer your questions. There are several threads in the General Residency forum addressing some of these issues as well. Bottom line is that legal action is a tough approach to go, time consuming and potentially costly. If there is any way to get a new position without suing, that would be best, but, every situation is different. An initial consult with a lawyer is not necessarily expensive though.

it may be too late now (since you already resigned), but your focus should be on getting a new position- before resigning you should have come to some understanding with the PD about what he would tell other programs who called about you, and what his letter about you would say.

I guess your next step should be lining up letters of rec from the attendings who support you. Maybe one of them could help you find a new position.

One of my friend has similar situation, she got 90 percentile in her in-training exam and still very difficult to get a new position as the new program concerned the reason of probation and resignation. She is thinking about to file a complaint to ACGME about PD misusing his power. Is that possible for the RRC to take action to the PD and force the PD take my friend back to the program? Thank you very much for your help!

Originally Posted by Bobmd2012

One of my friend has similar situation, she got 90 percentile in her in-training exam and still very difficult to get a new position as the new program concerned the reason of probation and resignation. She is thinking about to file a complaint to ACGME about PD misusing his power. Is that possible for the RRC to take action to the PD and force the PD take my friend back to the program? Thank you very much for your help!

Short answer: No.

The ACGME accredits programs. It does not get involved with individual resident complaints, so the ACGME will not help. They do not think it is their role -- whether it should be or not is a debate.

In addition, would your friend really want to end up back at that program? They would likely be miserable. Better to try to focus on getting into a new program.

It's a tough situation. In training scores are one aspect of performance, and having a good score is great but not necessarily a measure of whether the resident will do well. In situations like this, the resident and the program often tell different stories. Chances are, both think that their story is the "truth", which likely lies somewhere in between. As a PD, it's very difficult to assess what really happened, and the risk of taking a resident who runs into problems is high, hence programs are often hesitant to do so.