How to change a toxic medical school environment

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zback22 said:
I respectfully disagree with your first comment and I'm guessing you don't find it offensive because it doesn't apply to you. If you showed that sentence to someone with a disability, I would be surprised if they were not hurt by it. I think it's great that you've never seen admin flat out deny reasonable accommodations, but I have on multiple occasions for multiple people, and that's what I've been trying to say. I don't think it's fair to assume that something is unreasonable simply because it was denied. Unfortunately, not every school works the same way in what it's willing to do for its students.
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Again, you keep making assumptions and inferences.
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If your institution is acting in a manner that conflicts with legal standards or institutional policies that it is contractually obliged to follow, consult an attorney. Otherwise, all you can do is submit polite requests to faculty members/academic advisors/administrators; if your requests are consistently denied, then you have no recourse.
 
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Until you actually say the actual problem(s), the request made, and the school's response, there's not much more to say in this thread. All your posts are vague and have no useful information. You have a new throw-away account, so might as well spill the beans.
 
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Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Again, you keep making assumptions and inferences.
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I apologize if I made an incorrect assumption, but you and I are both making assumptions and inferences simultaneously. Yours are no more valid or correct than mine and vice versa. You may not feel a certain way or think a certain way, but that doesn't mean that others don't have the right to their own experiences and views. I am not wrong about something simply because someone else interprets it differently than I do. I can speak to the validity of the things I have seen others experience and have personally experienced. However, I don't think it's fair to say one person hasn't or isn't experiencing discrimination just because another hasn't gone through that exact same thing.
 
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zback22 said:
I apologize if I made an incorrect assumption, but you and I are both making assumptions and inferences simultaneously. Yours are no more valid or correct than mine and vice versa. You may not feel a certain way or think a certain way, but that doesn't mean that others don't have the right to their own experiences and views. I am not wrong about something simply because someone else interprets it differently than I do. I can speak to the validity of the things I have seen others experience and have personally experienced. However, I don't think it's fair to say one person hasn't or isn't experiencing discrimination just because another hasn't gone through that exact same thing.
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Are you here to receive feedback or to create some sort of bizarre psychodrama? Give it a rest already.
 
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ChiDO said:
Until you actually say the actual problem(s), the request made, and the school's response, there's not much more to say in this thread. All your posts are vague and have no useful information. You have a new throw-away account, so might as well spill the beans.
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That's okay, you don't have to say anything else. thanks for your post
 
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Lawpy said:
I still think it depends on the hospital system and the type of emergency.
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Yeah... it doesn’t. I have multiple children hospitalized emergently in multiple in different systems and I was the one who had to figure it out and make due.

Good luck finding your dream employer though.
 
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zback22 said:
I apologize if I made an incorrect assumption, but you and I are both making assumptions and inferences simultaneously. Yours are no more valid or correct than mine and vice versa. You may not feel a certain way or think a certain way, but that doesn't mean that others don't have the right to their own experiences and views. I am not wrong about something simply because someone else interprets it differently than I do. I can speak to the validity of the things I have seen others experience and have personally experienced. However, I don't think it's fair to say one person hasn't or isn't experiencing discrimination just because another hasn't gone through that exact same thing.
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I made zero assumptions. I said I don’t know anyone who was flat out denied reasonable accommodations.
 
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Lawpy said:
Does this change in private practice?
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If you own the practice... sure. If you’re partners own the practice or the practice is owned by a larger medical group... nope. You are only as useful as you are able to generate money and profits. If you can’t, they have no specific reason to employ you and emergencies and leaves eat into the profits.
 
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operaman said:
1) if a student has a chronic illness that is so bad it precludes them from scheduling routine appointments around their academic responsibilities, they need to consider a LOA. A doctors appointment is not carte Blanche to miss mandatory activities.

2) the school is under no obligation to indulge anyone’s religious beliefs. Most will work with students as best they can, but there is no world in which you can look at 7-10 years of medical educations and expect no conflicts with religious observance. In reality, the only times I’ve ever seen this be a problem are when students wait til the last minute to ask for time off. The responsible ones are emailing admin months in advance and adjusting their schedules as needed and have no problems at all.

3) why on earth would a school postpone a test date because a family member is sick or having surgery? They frequently offer a LOA if things are bad and nearly always make exceptions for emergencies. If something is planned enough in advance that there’s time to ask for a postponement, it probably doesn’t merit a postponement. Life happens while you’re in training or in practice.

4) medical schools have no obligation to treat a student’s illness. That’s between them and their physicians. Students are adult professionals and are perfectly capable of reaching out to admin on their own

5) based on the other examples, I’m going to guess that the accommodations requested were a stretch. Schools are required to make reasonable accommodations, but I’m willing to bet the requested accommodations were not only unreasonable, but stretched the limits of credulity to the point it was actually funny enough to be a punchline.

I have to say, based on what I’m hearing so far your school is being quite reasonable. These forums are littered with stories like yours of big bad schools and training programs that end up looking extremely reasonable once all the facts are known.
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yoooooo the OP didn't ask you to be arbiter of their case, just where to report possible abuses. Let them report it and then the appropriate people with the full details can hash it out. Posts like this only serve to discourage reporting period and contribute to the overall "Your program/school/whatever doesn't suck, you do" mentality that many victims of program/school abuse have to struggle with.
 
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Oh my this thread! OP, you are going to great lengths to avoid giving enough detail to allow anyone to draw their own conclusions. In light of that, I think most of us are assuming the facts don’t actually support your position. If you were my friend in real life, I’d give you the benefit of the doubt, but on an anonymous forum with a throwaway account, I’m going to be more skeptical.

My experience and that of every other physician or faculty member on this thread so far is that schools bend over backwards for students. When an anon comes here alleging their school is different, we inevitably think of all the students who similarly cried foul in the past but were actually causing their own problems. That may not be the case here, but since you suggest this issue spans multiple students yet have thus far not offered one concrete example, I’m afraid we are still left with the assumption that the student(s) are at fault here rather than a school randomly deciding to violate half a dozen federal laws.

To others reading this thread: US schools will bend over backward to help their students succeed. Most residency programs will do the same. So will most employers. Everyone has a vested interest in you succeeding and will work to make that happen. Be proactive, ask for help early, and be responsible and you’ll find that medical training is doable with most disabilities and chronic health conditions.

The way people screw themselves is by asking for help after the fact or by failing to meet basic standards of professional responsibility. Or by going to an offshore school. Don’t do that.
 
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zback22 said:
Well, there's a difference between liking someone or having some level of bond and being able to confide in them/ trust them with something that relates to their peers and employer. For example, I have thought that I could confide in someone in the past who offered to help, but that did not wind up staying between us. There are many other students I know who have had the same or similar experiences.
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@Mad Jack ...thoughts?
 
Goro said:
@Mad Jack ...thoughts?
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These days I find it too hard to sort the personality bits (care of my field) from the premed advice bits in cases like this. If OP has a legitimate medical condition, they should bring documentation from their physician or psychiatrist to the designated office in their school for evaluation of reasonable accommodations per the ADA. If they do not, they don't have a case. Seek out the advice of your doctor, as only they can determine how much of a case you may have, we can't give you medical or legal advice here.

With regard to trust issues, well- some environments are more toxic than others. Sometimes faculty mentors exist more to serve as an early warning system for troublesome students than to be true mentors or supports. Even if this isn't the case, if OP feels like they have no one to rely on, they probably don't, either by self-isolation due to paranoia or by legitimately concerning behavior that has painted a target on them. Whatever the case, for OP in particular the school's formal process for accommodations for their particular issue should be explored.
 
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SurfingDoctor said:
Well, residency isn’t life after residency. And I wouldn’t use n’s of 1 to extrapolate to anything. But you’re welcome to believe whatever you want.
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So your answer is basically, you’re wrong because I’m right. That’s not really a valid argument. I’m sure you’re right in many cases, but there are places that exist that aren’t like that.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
So your answer is basically, you’re wrong because I’m right. That’s not really a valid argument. I’m sure you’re right in many cases, but there are places that exist that aren’t like that.
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I mean, when you actually start practicing medicine as an attending, you don’t match into anything. You take what’s available and puts food on the table and hopefully offers a matching 401K.

But, I wish you the best in finding that dream job.
 
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SurfingDoctor said:
I mean, when you actually start practicing medicine as an attending, you don’t match into anything. You take what’s available and puts food on the table and hopefully offers a matching 401K.

But, I wish you the best in finding that dream job.
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Yeah I get that. You’re making a false dichotomy though. It doesn’t have to be an absolute perfect job to be accommodating for when a parent dies or something.
 
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Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Yeah I get that. You’re making a false dichotomy though. It doesn’t have to be an absolute perfect job to be accommodating for when a parent dies or something.
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Its not false if its been my experience. But its fine if you don't believe it. It makes no difference to me.
 
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SurfingDoctor said:
Its not false if its been my experience. But its fine if you don't believe it. It makes no difference to me.
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I literally wrote:
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
So your answer is basically, you’re wrong because I’m right. That’s not really a valid argument. I’m sure you’re right in many cases, but there are places that exist that aren’t like that.
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Not sure why you’re being so antagonistic.

And a false dichotomy doesn’t mean your experience is false. But I think you know that.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
I literally wrote:

Not sure why you’re being so antagonistic.
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Yeah, and good luck finding them. It's not antagonism. It's just being truthful. I'm not trying to dissuade you from finding them or discounting your own experience of a residency... but I'm not going lie either in that I've never seen them.

Either way, it's pretty clear we've reached the end of this conversation.
 
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zback22 said:
And without revealing too much, students were requesting to miss preclinical lecture sessions on devout religious holidays. When someone is on call, they usually have the option of trying to switch dates with someone else. Additionally, doctors are also at least getting paid to care for patients during this time. On the other hand, schools are legally prohibited from religious discrimination against students.
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Every major world religion, allows religious observances to be broken by people working in healthcare. Perhaps you don't think pre-clinical classes apply....but realistically, you need to get used to working on holy days, because if you work in health care, you will have to. If you work in a country that is predominantly one religion, there isn't going to be anyone to trade with, someone has to work on the holy days.

If your personal religious beliefs do not allow any acceptions to working on holy days ever, then you should probably consider a job/career outside of healthcare.
 
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Melchizedek said:
yoooooo the OP didn't ask you to be arbiter of their case, just where to report possible abuses. Let them report it and then the appropriate people with the full details can hash it out. Posts like this only serve to discourage reporting period and contribute to the overall "Your program/school/whatever doesn't suck, you do" mentality that many victims of program/school abuse have to struggle with.
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The reality is that no one is going to get into the weeds and figure out what was fair or not fair. Typically there will be an administrator who plays this role on top of another academic position they're busy with. His/her effective role is to serve as a front to demonstrate to LCME that the medical school has a place where students can voice their concerns, (but nothing will be done about it). This applies to the whole continuum of medical education and training. No one is strictly dedicated to ensuring you are accomodated to the extent you think you're entitled to. There are very few exceptions which are typically egregious violations where there is a clear right/wrong or one is able to demonstrate an institution did not follow the policies it explicitly set for itself. @operaman doesn't have all the information (because OP hasn't provided much) but is probably digging deeper than anyone else will (for free) and his points are not unreasonable. In fact at this stage, it's more helpful to get critical feedback than green-light, self-validating feedback a lawyer may give you to persuade you into hiring him/her for litigation.
 
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BacktotheBasics said:
The reality is that no one is going to get into the weeds and figure out what was fair or not fair. Typically there will be an administrator who plays this role on top of another academic position they're busy with. His/her effective role is to serve as a front to demonstrate to LCME that the medical school has a place where students can voice their concerns, (but nothing will be done about it). This applies to the whole continuum of medical education and training. No one is strictly dedicated to ensuring you are accomodated to the extent you think you're entitled to. There are very few exceptions which are typically egregious violations where there is a clear right/wrong or one is able to demonstrate an institution did not follow the policies it explicitly set for itself. @operaman doesn't have all the information (because OP hasn't provided much) but is probably digging deeper than anyone else will (for free) and his points are not unreasonable. In fact at this stage, it's more helpful to get critical feedback than green-light, self-validating feedback a lawyer may give you to persuade you into hiring him/her for litigation.
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The bolded is my point. There are no details about the situations OP is mentioning so anyone on this thread trying to push ANY narrative about who is right or wrong is speculating. If the OP doesn't want to give details that's fine. Maybe the OP would be easily identified and there would be retribution, maybe the OP IS just spinning bad personal decisions as a malignant administration. We just don't know. They could be talking in PM I don't know, but publicly making a wall post that says "here are all the ways you're wrong" is not the way to go about getting more information.
 
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Melchizedek said:
The bolded is my point. There are no details about the situations OP is mentioning so anyone on this thread trying to push ANY narrative about who is right or wrong is speculating. If the OP doesn't want to give details that's fine. Maybe the OP would be easily identified and there would be retribution, maybe the OP IS just spinning bad personal decisions as a malignant administration. We just don't know. They could be talking in PM I don't know, but publicly making a wall post that says "here are all the ways you're wrong" is not the way to go about getting more information.
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My chief aim in my initial post was to combat the narrative that this school is a “toxic” environment. I saw the lack of details and supposed (I believe correctly) that OP was taking liberties with the facts and looking for some kind of validation. Unfortunately, this tends to perpetuate the notion that Med school is some terrible toxic place where admin is out to get the students. My experience and that of every other physician in this thread is that 99% of the time these stories end up showing the student or resident to be the ones with the problem.

I also hoped that if the concerns were well founded my contrarian response would elicit enough detail to prove me wrong. Instead the OP suggested my disagreeing was “cyber bullying” which helps us better understand their threshold for hyperbole and what “toxic” really means.

In reality, US schools will do just about anything to help their students succeed and make all sorts of accommodations, whether for disabilities or religion or family emergencies.
 
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SurfingDoctor said:
Yeah... it doesn’t. I have multiple children hospitalized emergently in multiple in different systems and I was the one who had to figure it out and make due.

Good luck finding your dream employer though.
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I don't think it benefits anyone to normalize this for any job. I'm sorry if this is your job. If your coworkers don't have your back and the ship goes down because your kid's in the hospital for a few days than that's about as much writing on the wall as you need to put in your 30days. I get that this mentality is normalized through med school and residency, and I acknowledge that I'm going to be paying into that system myself - but if you're continuing that mentality as an attending then you are only hurting yourself and those that come after you. Every job has built in sick leave/emergency policies precisely for that reason. What's in your contract? What's the fine print?

I think it's easy to lump the students as starry eyed idealists with no concept of the "real" world. But some of us spent quite a bit of time there, some of us have families, houses, loans, car payments, and a whole former career. Business is gonna business. It's morbid, but if you died tomorrow what would happen? Would the hospital shut down? Would the system come to a halt? No, the show goes on.
 
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notretired said:
I don't think it benefits anyone to normalize this for any job. I'm sorry if this is your job. If your coworkers don't have your back and the ship goes down because your kid's in the hospital for a few days than that's about as much writing on the wall as you need to put in your 30days. I get that this mentality is normalized through med school and residency, and I acknowledge that I'm going to be paying into that system myself - but if you're continuing that mentality as an attending then you are only hurting yourself and those that come after you. Every job has built in sick leave/emergency policies precisely for that reason. What's in your contract? What's the fine print?

I think it's easy to lump the students as starry eyed idealists with no concept of the "real" world. But some of us spent quite a bit of time there, some of us have families, houses, loans, car payments, and a whole former career. Business is gonna business. It's morbid, but if you died tomorrow what would happen? Would the hospital shut down? Would the system come to a halt? No, the show goes on.
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The contract is that I'm hired to do "X" number of shifts. That's it. If those shifts conflict with my personal issues of "Y"... cool, I can figure it out. I don't think you understand how businesses work beyond that as I... personally... am not involved in how businesses operate.

You want to rise up against the system... have at it. I'll cheer you on... whilst making sure my 401 K and kids future from a college standpoint is secured. You go though... I'll get my gin and juice...

tenor.gif
 
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SurfingDoctor said:
The contract is that I'm hired to do "X" number of shifts. That's it. If those shifts conflict with my personal issues of "Y"... cool, I can figure it out. I don't think you understand how businesses work beyond that as I... personally... am not involved in how businesses operate.

You want to rise up against the system... have at it. I'll cheer you on... whilst making sure my 401 K and kids future from a college standpoint is secured. You go...
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Honestly i did disagree initially because i found it to be so sweeping and broad... then i saw this:

www.wsj.com

WSJ News Exclusive | Hospitals Hide Pricing Data From Search Results

Hospitals that have published their previously confidential prices to comply with a new federal rule have also blocked that information from web searches, according to a Wall Street Journal examination.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com

Then i became jaded again
 
Lawpy said:
Honestly i did disagree initially because i found it to be so sweeping and broad... then i saw this:

www.wsj.com

WSJ News Exclusive | Hospitals Hide Pricing Data From Search Results

Hospitals that have published their previously confidential prices to comply with a new federal rule have also blocked that information from web searches, according to a Wall Street Journal examination.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com

Then i became jaded again
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I don't get the relevance. Whatever hospitals make doesn't impact me. My trickle down is fixed at "X" shift per year..
 
Lawpy said:
If hospitals can manipulate search results to avoid federal rules regarding price transparency, they can get away in being unforgiving to any leave for any reason
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I mean, they are a business. They can do whatever they feel optimizes that model. To think otherwise is naive. The best is to accept it and move on.
 
zback22 said:
Students with chronic illnesses being reprimanded for missing class for doctors' appointments, students receiving push back or denied religious absence requests, not pushing postponing test dates for students who have immediate family members with life-threatening emergencies/ operations, doing nothing to support (or even follow up with) students who report serious mental illness, arbitrarily refusing to provide certain accommodations to students with disabilities and then joking about it with other faculty members
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If its a DO School a student could seek help from COCA, if its an allopathic program, AAMC/LCME. Then the ADA protects students as well from behavior such as this. So sorry you're classmates are enduring such behavior. School is stressful enough
 
I see this thread and I also see medical doctors suicide rate rising to match veterinarians in the coming years.
 
You can't. It's a large part of why I left.
 
zback22 said:
As per the comment below, I respectfully disagree and do 100% consider this to be bullying.

"based on the other examples, I’m going to guess that the accommodations requested were a stretch. Schools are required to make reasonable accommodations, but I’m willing to bet the requested accommodations were not only unreasonable, but stretched the limits of credulity to the point it was actually funny enough to be a punchline."
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I heard an older progressive/civil rights leader on NPR the other day say that young progressives can't differentiate feeling unsafe from being unsafe. This comment made me think of that.
 
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zback22 said:
Wow okay.

These statements are not aligned with my experience and have not held true at my school.

Why do you assume that I've been coddled all my life and now am in the real world for the first time? Or that I'm a member of a "future generation?" I've missed all of those things in the past, but do not consider a mom's birthday or a kid's recital to be equivalent to any of the things I was referring to in my post.
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There are definitely some displeasing people in these forums, so full of themselves 😔 You are probably aware SDN has a reputation (if you weren't, now you are), so try not to take it personally or engage these persons. My advice to you, take the good advice, ignore the rest.
 
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dnyal said:
There are definitely some displeasing people in these forums, so full of themselves 😔 You are probably aware SDN has a reputation (if you weren't, now you are), so try not to take it personally or engage these persons. My advice to you, take the good advice, ignore the rest.
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You got that right... some of these attitudes are incredibly abhorrent. I worry for all the disabled & otherwise marginalized patients these people encounter in real life if this is how they respond to a hypothetical.
 
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dnyal said:
There are definitely some displeasing people in these forums, so full of themselves 😔 You are probably aware SDN has a reputation (if you weren't, now you are), so try not to take it personally or engage these persons. My advice to you, take the good advice, ignore the rest.
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sparrows said:
You got that right... some of these attitudes are incredibly abhorrent. I worry for all the disabled & otherwise marginalized patients these people encounter in real life if this is how they respond to a hypothetical.
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The irony is the only posts that involved personal attacks were from you guys...
 
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zback22 said:
Hey guys!

Does anyone have advice on what to do when your medical school refuses to take even small steps towards accommodating, supporting, and protecting its students and their emotional well-being? Is there anything that can be done aside from asking for help (and repeatedly being shut down)? Feeling desperate.
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Seems like a fairly ubiquitous sentiment of students across (most?) medical schools that admin aren't particularly catering. Bear in mind that firstly you're not alone as far as feeling like more support could be there. Depends what your concern is (i.e., help with study, peer-to-peer conflicts, etc.). Usually universities, if not the medical schools themselves, have some form of student wellness center or division you can contact. Have you searched around for that stuff? If it's more a scenario that you just want to vent, have a chat with your parents or those who are close to you.
 
I think it’s important to realize that a school or program or hospital employer will only go as far as they need to do as they 1) are not breaking the law or running afoul of some state/federal regulation and 2) to keep the doors open to generate a profit.

To suggest they want to do more runs afoul of the idea of competition. It’s not easy to get into medical school nor the residency program of your dreams or the job with the best salary. They know this and likewise know that for every person that wants them to go above and beyond, there’s 20 people next in line who don’t care at all and would do anything to have your spot.

Of course, you may not like this, but that’s how the world works. You can try to change it again, but remember that the system teaching/employing you has no reason to change and there are many others who could be in your shoes who just don’t care... thus collectively, there is no reason to implement change. Again, I’m not arguing for or against anything, just giving the lay of the land and have been doing this long enough to know that if you want to get burned out and go down in a blaze of agony in this profession, trying to implement change where no one but you wants that change is a sure fire way to achieve that.
 
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