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Kind of absurd for them to grade you poorly based on a stutter, both of them pretty much threw you under the bus for your disability, I would confront them and ask them specifically why you got a poor grade, get it in an email, and get it in writing. If residency programs will give you a hard time in the interview because of your stutter then deal with that then, don't let your preceptors decide your fate now. Try to get them to acknowledge that your stutter played a role in your grade, then I would appeal based on a violation of Americans with Disabilities act, you got a good step score bro, i'd rather have a surgeon who is knowledgeable operate on me with your step score, a stutter wouldn't matter to me. Also one other route is to ask and look for residency programs that will be accepting of your stutter, just email program directors for audition rotations and let them know up front, if they let you audition there then they will be ok with it, and you can tell them your clinical grades suffered because you stutter.
Personally I would take legal action against these misguided preceptors, it is rare for two preceptors to give you bad evals in same rotation, the common denominator here is your disability and that is unlawful, your stutter won't interfere with your ability as a care provider, I couldn't understand a tremor, but definitely not your speech.
Personally I would take legal action against these misguided preceptors, it is rare for two preceptors to give you bad evals in same rotation, the common denominator here is your disability and that is unlawful, your stutter won't interfere with your ability as a care provider, I couldn't understand a tremor, but definitely not your speech.
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I'm sorry this has happened. I have a stutter myself, but more minor than yours from the sound of it. I'm only an M2, and maybe pimping has a different dynamic, but from previous experience working before medical school most people are pretty understanding if you clear your throat and start over.
I've never been on rotations so please take this with a grain of salt, you seem pretty hung up on the stuttering aspect. The attending seemed to have other concerns. Are you suggesting they rated you more harshly elsewhere but the real issue is the stutter? "Does not pick up on social queues" seems to suggest other issues at hand.
I've never been on rotations so please take this with a grain of salt, you seem pretty hung up on the stuttering aspect. The attending seemed to have other concerns. Are you suggesting they rated you more harshly elsewhere but the real issue is the stutter? "Does not pick up on social queues" seems to suggest other issues at hand.
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alright well best of luck and keep us posted, we are rooting for you !
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Oh wow that's rough, but glad family medicine is working out! maybe wait an appeal again after you have other positive clerkships for you school admin to compare it to, I think you can make a much stronger case then for sure!
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Tough situation here and obviously we only have one side of things to go on. OP is correct that doing well for the rest of the year is critical.
Much depends on what you ultimately want to do. If your goal is a less competitive field and your other grades are solid, then I’d probably leave it alone. If you are aiming for something more selective, then it might be worth taking action.
I would continue to use whatever internal avenues are available to dispute this. Disability office, ombudsman, and whatever other appeals you can make.
Pretty much nobody fails a rotation. I’ve seen students literally cuss at their attendings in the OR and walk out of the room saying something like “I don’t have to put up with your s—t” and still somehow pass! The assumption will be that you did something truly terrible and did it repeatedly. Maybe that’s true, but if not then I would continue to pursue getting it overturned.
Honestly if you didn’t really do anything worthy of failure then legal action may even be warranted as a last resort. Here again you need to have impeccable grades otherwise before you file, but this is a career threatening event and needs to be met with serious action if it’s truly unfair.
I’d meet with some attorneys sooner than later. If the rest of the year goes well then you could ask the court for an injunction barring the school from disclosing the failed course to prospective residency programs. It’s a long shot but you have little to lose at that point.
Much depends on what you ultimately want to do. If your goal is a less competitive field and your other grades are solid, then I’d probably leave it alone. If you are aiming for something more selective, then it might be worth taking action.
I would continue to use whatever internal avenues are available to dispute this. Disability office, ombudsman, and whatever other appeals you can make.
Pretty much nobody fails a rotation. I’ve seen students literally cuss at their attendings in the OR and walk out of the room saying something like “I don’t have to put up with your s—t” and still somehow pass! The assumption will be that you did something truly terrible and did it repeatedly. Maybe that’s true, but if not then I would continue to pursue getting it overturned.
Honestly if you didn’t really do anything worthy of failure then legal action may even be warranted as a last resort. Here again you need to have impeccable grades otherwise before you file, but this is a career threatening event and needs to be met with serious action if it’s truly unfair.
I’d meet with some attorneys sooner than later. If the rest of the year goes well then you could ask the court for an injunction barring the school from disclosing the failed course to prospective residency programs. It’s a long shot but you have little to lose at that point.
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Medical education actually kinda blows.. If they wanted to, a single preceptor can write **** about you and give you all 1’s and basically unravel everything you’ve worked for until that point. There’s no checks or balances or a way to defend yourself. The majority of attendings never even observe students interacting with a patient but can still write things like “doesn’t know how to talk to patients” if they wanted to and have it be law lol. It’s a terrible system.
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You’re right that legal action is the nuclear option and has a low likelihood of success. Still might be worth speaking with an attorney though just to get a sense of your rights and options.
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You want him to sue because he failed a rotation? Lol he needs to remediate and start showing more social awareness and then hope to match a mid to low competitive field, he is saying he was discriminated against because of a stutter..that’s highly unlikely and probably not the case..the reality is probably he repeatedly acted inappropriately and without regard to social norms and the attending/resident got sick of it..if he actually was discriminated against because of a disability..that’s insane and completely a different discussion but again highly unlikely
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Yup, this is exactly why third year grades are so f*cked. Let’s ignore the fact that OP also got "Enthusiastic, works well with the team", "He was very kind and professional in his interactions with patients and their families". All that matters is “unaware of social queues.” When I’m attending, every 5th medical student is getting “on the spectrum”. We need more smart people in family med anyway.
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we don't know what happened though since we only have one side of the story here.
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With your scores you will be fine applying mid tier IM, keep trying your best and you’ll do just fine, good luck
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It doesnt happen a lot.
Biggest things are to show up on time, be professional, act interested, and learn to apply feedback (as an M3, you’re not expected to know as much of really anything). If youre being told your clinical knowledge is lower than expected, you read more, offer to give a presentation on a topic, etc. If your presentations need work, and they will at first, ask for feedback, pre-write your notes to get organized.
If people fail, it is usually for a professionalism thing, or, failing the shelf. At least at my school.
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I agree that fighting this with a lawyer is likely to end badly for you. The courts are very clear about academic privilege for schools. Unless you can prove that you were actually discriminated against (and nothing so far in this thread is proof of that), courts will defer to schools. All you will do is make your school angry.
There is unlikely to be a "second appeal". You could look at your school's "student manual" (they probably have a different name for it) and it should explain the process. If there is a second appeal, it's probably the Dean. The chances of the Dean overturning the findings of a clerkship are very small.
Regarding your fluency disorder, you've already hit the high points. It probably counts as an ADA disability -- although if it doesn't affect other parts of your life much, it might not. If it does, then you need to ask for accommodations before you run into trouble -- you can't ask retroactively. Accommodations would be "what can the program do to help address your disability?". They won't change their standards -- you're still expected to see the same number of patients, meet duty hours, etc. Asking to see less patients, or more time per patient, would not likely be considered acceptable. Still, best to get it evaluated by the disability office and see if there are any options.
Regarding the comment "does not have issues with speech", it's probable that what's meant by that is that your mild speech problem is not the cause of their concern. I agree it's worded poorly, and it's possible that the evaluator misinterpreted your speech problem as a social awareness problem -- but I find that somewhat hard to believe / explain since the two are very different. Asking why your school "won't support you" because of this statement is missing the point, I think.
Like many threads like this, the story may get more clear as the thread progresses. You wrote above that your behavior may have been very irritating to the residents, and maybe to the faculty as well. The faculty member just dumped you with the dentist to hold things, which is ridiculous. But is probably due to the fact that you were driving people crazy. Seems likely unrelated to your stutter. That's the real problem here, I think. Once you create a problematic persona for yourself, it's hard to change.
But what about those nice things people said about you? First, they might very well be true. You may have only upset some people, and not others. Or perhaps your performance was variable - better on some days than others. Or perhaps those people were just too nice, and wrote something bland so that they didn't have to write about the real problem. This is a very common problem -- it's rare that all of the comments are problematic, so even if only a few are it may represent a real problem.
Underlying all of this is the problem that evaluation in medical school is subjective. Hence, it's amenable to bias and error. If someone finds an objective way to actually evaluate clinical work, it would be great. But it's probably impossible.
Anyway, the core problem here is that you really upset the people you were working with by not understanding the workflow, your role as a student, and how you can be helpful. You may argue that they should have taught you that as part of the rotation, others would argue that it's something that you should have picked up by now (most schools have some clinical work early on) or that you should have picked up on the fact that you were annoying people very quickly and fixed the problem. Faculty and residents don't get paid to have you work with them -- students slow us down, so you need to either 1) find a way to be useful and save me some time, or 2) be fun to work with so that I don't mind the extra time / work.
I hope this is helpful.
There is unlikely to be a "second appeal". You could look at your school's "student manual" (they probably have a different name for it) and it should explain the process. If there is a second appeal, it's probably the Dean. The chances of the Dean overturning the findings of a clerkship are very small.
Regarding your fluency disorder, you've already hit the high points. It probably counts as an ADA disability -- although if it doesn't affect other parts of your life much, it might not. If it does, then you need to ask for accommodations before you run into trouble -- you can't ask retroactively. Accommodations would be "what can the program do to help address your disability?". They won't change their standards -- you're still expected to see the same number of patients, meet duty hours, etc. Asking to see less patients, or more time per patient, would not likely be considered acceptable. Still, best to get it evaluated by the disability office and see if there are any options.
Regarding the comment "does not have issues with speech", it's probable that what's meant by that is that your mild speech problem is not the cause of their concern. I agree it's worded poorly, and it's possible that the evaluator misinterpreted your speech problem as a social awareness problem -- but I find that somewhat hard to believe / explain since the two are very different. Asking why your school "won't support you" because of this statement is missing the point, I think.
Like many threads like this, the story may get more clear as the thread progresses. You wrote above that your behavior may have been very irritating to the residents, and maybe to the faculty as well. The faculty member just dumped you with the dentist to hold things, which is ridiculous. But is probably due to the fact that you were driving people crazy. Seems likely unrelated to your stutter. That's the real problem here, I think. Once you create a problematic persona for yourself, it's hard to change.
But what about those nice things people said about you? First, they might very well be true. You may have only upset some people, and not others. Or perhaps your performance was variable - better on some days than others. Or perhaps those people were just too nice, and wrote something bland so that they didn't have to write about the real problem. This is a very common problem -- it's rare that all of the comments are problematic, so even if only a few are it may represent a real problem.
Underlying all of this is the problem that evaluation in medical school is subjective. Hence, it's amenable to bias and error. If someone finds an objective way to actually evaluate clinical work, it would be great. But it's probably impossible.
Anyway, the core problem here is that you really upset the people you were working with by not understanding the workflow, your role as a student, and how you can be helpful. You may argue that they should have taught you that as part of the rotation, others would argue that it's something that you should have picked up by now (most schools have some clinical work early on) or that you should have picked up on the fact that you were annoying people very quickly and fixed the problem. Faculty and residents don't get paid to have you work with them -- students slow us down, so you need to either 1) find a way to be useful and save me some time, or 2) be fun to work with so that I don't mind the extra time / work.
I hope this is helpful.
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