I know we all get busy and can forget things. But, that is on you. You live and you learn. I know too many physicians and even residents that complain and want the rules bent for them. A TB screen/PPD is well know from way back in medical school. It needs renewal within 12 months. You can get it at any number of locations. You can get it anytime, be it every 6, 9, 10+ months. You should surely have a free moment at some point over a three month period! It is unfortunate for a resident to undergo such stressors.... But, we are adults. There are mandatory minimum workplace requiresments beyond just maintaining license renewal. It is nice to be reminded of things. however, the responsibility is yours even if you are not reminded.
Sure, but if you were pulled over by the police and shot in the knee for going 4mph over the limit, and they cited an obscure law that states all surgeons speeding in the first month of 2011 will be shot on sight, and that this was publicly posted in the newspaper last year, you might think it was overkill.
Yes, yes, we can over dramatize and be apalled at another blog of abused resident/s. But, updated TB screen/PPD status is not an obscure rule or requirement. I dare say that a 5th year resident should know the drill. Also, while one may blogged to death about your unfair treatment or the unfair treatment you heard of in reference to someone else, we do not know the facts or the terms of every hospital residency employment.
I did read enough of the link. Sometimes the terminology can get confusing. Sometimes one has privileges terminated... pending compliance which is not the same as being fired, per se. However, in the first paragraph, I find the admission very informative:
Some residency programs have very strick email reading requirements too. Residents and employees inh general may be required as terms of contract to review all emails (even ~hospital wide spam stuff) as a requirement. The so called, 5th year resident, victim acknowledges probably receiving a reminder two months in advance and deleting it....FromLink said:
IMHO, that is a very unfortunate mentality to owning one's responsibilities.
Yes, usually. I don't get Flu shots and am not required to do so in my hospital. I have a calendar and schedule my appointments and dates. The issue is not me or If I'm perfect. Just because the guy in front of me got through a stretch of highway speeding is not an excuse when I get a ticket. It is nice to get a reminder. That is a courteousy and not necessarily an entitlement (depending on terms of employment). If I accidently delete an email reminder from med-licensing board and fail to renew on time, it is on me. The argument of, "unless your perfect then rules don't apply" is somewhat junior high juvenile.
Our hospital does that for residents/students/etc... on a different calendar schedule and attendings and regular employees on an another.
Yep, apparently the softer/kinder approach didn't work as he "accidentally" failed to read email and instead deleted it. He missed a several month window to do a simple task. It is amazing the tone around here and IMHO, should be embarassing, i.e. ~we are the most educated in the hospital, we are the most valuable, we should have different rules for us cause routine scheduling is too difficult and I will cry cause my thingy hurts....
This is exceedingly common at numerous hospitals around the country. Hospitals have "inclement weather" rules/guidelines/protocols. Some will directly phone and/or email employees about impending bad weather. Others require employees to contact the hospital in advance to obtain information as to the hospitals plan. It is common for hospitals to require staff to come in the night before and sleep at the hospital or the hospital pays for rooms at local hotel for employees to stay in the night before anticipated weather events. This is done around the country for numerous critical service industries including healthcare, law enforcement, firefighters, air traffic controllers, etc.... The expectation is that critical service employees behave like adults and recognize their obligations.
😕 My opinion or anyone elses on here doesn't matter so reasonable or unreasonable isn't relavant. However, my take is that the story is very one sided and there is no reasonable way for me to take it at face value.
A senior radiology resident, 80hr restrictions, by his own account possibly had up to 2 months advanced notice/reminder.... how busy could he be, seriously!!! It's embarassing. I am apalled he would go out of his way to post it publicly.
First, I believe he very likely did get the email based on his own recount. I doubt he would make that statement. It is silly. If he never got the email, he would simply state, "I never got any email...". Instead, he states, "I apparently got an automated email..." and then proceeds with excuses of not remembering it and somehow spam filtering his work emails by accident.
No. Again, adult accountability. If his story is to be believed (with your caveat), his classmates/colleagues/?friends got placed on a ~no-fly/impending grounded list and he somehow knew nothing about it and/or couldn't put 1 and 1 together to get 2.
Exactly!
👍
No. I think you are missing the point. He did not say he never received the email. Rather, that was your caveat. Also, I am NOT arguing that his name was or was not on this list.
I got your point. It is a matter of opinion in which we differ. I have watched over the past 15+yrs and seen that a single, well placed incident of ~excessive force goes a long way to cleaning up residents' and attendings not doing their job. Presuming, the PD didn't respond to a letter that his/her residents were in danger of suspension/termination, presuming the prog-coordinator didn't respond to a letter that his/her residents were in danger of suspension/termination, what ever the case, I am certain everyone up and down that radiology residency AND all other residecies in that hospital AND nursing/allied health folks will now be on time with health maintenance, PPDs, etc... That one incident did more then a thousand emails ever could. The residents in this program felt it. The PD felt it. The assistant PD felt it. The prog-coord felt it..... After this incident, they don't even need to phone! That is efficiency. It is the same for attendings. It only takes your privileges/cases being canceled once for you to know dictations need to be done on time.
I hope this was in an area with a glut of nurses, otherwise I'm sure they had some great staffing issues after that. Unless all of these nurses decided not to call to say they couldn't come, that's an extremely stupid way to conduct business.
In short, we really don't have all the facts and are continually speculating, so why are you still arguing it?No. I think you are missing the point. He did not say he never received the email. Rather, that was your caveat. Also, I am NOT arguing that his name was or was not on this list.
If I believe it at face value, with him forgetting email/deleting email/not getting email, it is still not believeable. Unless he had his head deep in a nuclear bunker for two months, I just don't see him (or any other resident in the program) NOT hearing about his colleagues/classmates/friends being on this list and not saying, "Hmmmm maybe I need one of those strange and mysterious PPD things". I also find it hard to believe that any PD/Prog coordinator would get a letter listing residents in danger of being suspended/fired and not generally reminding all residents in the program.I got your point. It is a matter of opinion in which we differ. I have watched over the past 15+yrs and seen that a single, well placed incident of ~excessive force goes a long way to cleaning up residents' and attendings not doing their job. Presuming, the PD didn't respond to a letter that his/her residents were in danger of suspension/termination, presuming the prog-coordinator didn't respond to a letter that his/her residents were in danger of suspension/termination, what ever the case, I am certain everyone up and down that radiology residency AND all other residecies in that hospital AND nursing/allied health folks will now be on time with health maintenance, PPDs, etc... That one incident did more then a thousand emails ever could. The residents in this program felt it. The PD felt it. The assistant PD felt it. The prog-coord felt it..... After this incident, they don't even need to phone! That is efficiency. It is the same for attendings. It only takes your privileges/cases being canceled once for you to know dictations need to be done on time.
PS: the residents would be idiots to not, in light of incident, check their emails, fix spam filters, etc..... efficiency
Looks like you wanted to participate and add to maintanance of the thread.
Yes, I understand that that one sentence out of context and devoid of the previous points can get confusing. It is not that I disbelieve his not being on the list. I disbelieve his use of not being on the list as an excuse.
As Smurfette so eloquently put it, "been there, done that...". You can't break wind in a residency without everyone in the hospital knowing about it. Hospitals are by nature a gossip factory. The fact of this supposed 5th year rads resident getting suspended/fired has drawn plenty of conversation from everyone here that doesn't even know him/her. Residents (i.e. the others on the list) being notified they are at risk for suspension/termination would very much be part of the residency gossip. This would not be viewed as a mundane notification by the rsidents, prog-coord, PD. At least one resident would be whining how "unfair" and "unreasonable" such threats are.... In classic residency fashion, the listed residents would play the victim, running around recruiting colleagues to their view/defense of how draconian and unfair such a "threat" is. They of course will leave out the parts of the story of habitual tardiness in these things, etc... Or, the fact that the residency program as a whole has a problem of compliance leading to such a warning would be absent from the discussion. I already hear residents saying, "we are so busy and stressed. it's just not right to make threats of suspension. it adds so much stress I couldn't sleep...".
Exactly. We are physicians saving lives so rules should bend to our convenience.👎
I meant to respond to this one earlier.... This was likely a no cost solution to the hospital. Hospitals waste huge dollars in numerous areas. Where I stand, canceling a physicians entire day of scheduled cases for failure to dictate seems costly and inneficient. Management presumably has a better idea of the final balance sheet and costs. Maybe, between malpractice protection, JCAHO and any other accrediting body, it may be cost effective to prevent future lapses in documentation. The scenario of this resident being suspended... I am not sure where the costs are. They didn't stop reading films. The PD and others likely stayed late at night to catch up with missed work from dealing with this admin nightmare. And, in the end, admin probably has to make less kind reminder phone calls in the future. Thus, they free up their HR person to handle other business while the "residency children" grow up a little and take care of business like adults. We don't know what the actual costs are for the HR people to make multiple phone calls to all staff; attendings, residents, ancillary, etc... But, if we presume this residency resembles anything like all the other residencies in the country, it is likely the prog-coord has now added this reminder task to their list of childcare duties.... and, if it wasn't before, it is now likely part of the resident contracts and hospital bylaws. Again, the efficiency and costs savings of cold cruel but effective management.
In other words... it ends with whatever was convenient for the resident/attending/allied health person. It ends with whatever that "last" effort, no matter what or how many before, convinces the resident/attending/allied health employee to take care of business. In otherwards, it really doesn't end until the individual decides to take responsibility or the rules bend into obscurity and irrelavence.
Must be..... cause, I have never, ever known any residency program or cadre of residents that would just assume, "no big deal, business as usual...", when receiving word they are in danger of suspension/termination over a PPD. Plenty of folks are on this thread now talking about how unreasonable such an act would be. Do you really think residents would get a threat as such and not cry the same... i.e. it is unreasonable?
Yet, you have not really cited any real examples of potential costs. I am just not seeing any real expense in this.... except maybe on the resident.
I did read it and I do understand that. I appreciate the original premise that this resident was terminated or suspended or something. However, part of the case/argument/defense of injustice is that his/her name was not on the list of residents warned of potential adverse action for failure to comply with a simple thing like PPD. I find that argument unconvincing and actually goes against the resident. The issue is that a residency program would either
Hello! That is why companies go to a salaried and non-hourly pay structure. The costs of overtime, etc... are no longer an issue for the company/business. And, this is exactly what hospitals, schools, etc... do to physicians and teachers, and etc... This is what Physicians complain about as well, the un-reimbursed care and tasks they perform.... including administration, etc...
This is probably the only thing in your characterization I wholey agree with, that and the point that we will likely not agree... The rest are over simplified positions and interpretations on your part.
Welcome to the discussion. Better late then never......
