Failed Rotation. Help please!

[Turpulus]

Hello everyone,

I was recently informed that I failed my IM rotation. This came completely out of nowhere and their reasoning was that I seemed "disinterested." I received positive feedback from the residents and had virtually no interaction with the attending. He was only at the hospital for an hour each day and only asked me two questions and asked me to present only 2 patients, which he cut me off on. I had no chance to prove myself. The head of medical education conducted an investigation and interviewed the residents I worked with. Not Surprisingly, they wouldn't back me, for fear of pissing off their attending. There were a lot of underlying politics going on and I feel that I may have gotten caught in the middle. I'm not sure what to do at this point. I feel like I need to fight this, but I can't see myself winning this fight. What should I do? I'm contemplating switching my base hospital over this. How much will a single failed rotation cripple my residency application? Any advice anyone can give me will be much appreciated.

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[Wailea]

I would first politely ask the attending for an explanation (in writing, in email). If no response, I'd take the copy to the director of medical education and ask him/her to help out.

 

[CodeNineyNine]

A failed rotation would be terrible for your chances at residency, especially in a field so universally regarded as IM. Work up the chain of command all the way to the top if you must. Be respectful and patient with every email, phone call, and interview you have, but be firm. You cannot afford a failed rotation come time for residency interviews.

 

[Trogdor_The_Burninator]

Dear Turpulus,

I'm really sorry to hear about what happened. The two responses (above mine) are absolutely right-on when it comes to game-planning for getting to the bottom of this situation. In fact, there were at least 2 students at my school who had similar experiences, and after they approached the chain of command much like what's described above, the students found their evaluations were due to errors in communication. After they cleared the air, they were able to get "fairer" evaluations that better reflected their time on service. I hope you can get to the bottom of this, as failing IM has the potential to greatly impact applying to/interviewing at/getting into a residency.

Just a few thoughts (you don't have to answer any of these...):

- Is there a student advocate/liason/curriculum cmt member in your class who can help you pursue this further? Who handles conflicts such as this? What happens when the conflicts remain unresolved?
- What are ways that your head of medical education felt you could rectify this situation? (other than accept a failing grade...)
- Are your IM attending's evals discordant with all other evals you've gotten on the IM clerkship? If so, you have a strong case that the eval doesn't represent your character/skills...

Any other input from other forum-ers would be greatly helpful.

I hope you find an acceptable solution to this issue. Good luck!!!

 

[Turpulus]

I've followed the appeals process, but it did not help at all. It only made things worse. They are taking the words of the untruthful words of the attending over mine. I now have to leave my base hospital. Their investigatory process is simply to talk to the attending to see what he says. It really isn't set up to help students. Some of his comments were flat out lies.

 

[FlowLimited]

I feel like there must be more to this story. Was your grade truly based on a single evaluation? What about other attendings? Evaluations from residents? Shelf score?

 

[Akali]

their reasoning was that I seemed "disinterested."

Surely there is more reasoning than that.

 

[operaman]

Yeah I'm not buying it either. It is such a pain in the arse to fail s student that nobody would do it simply because someone was disinterested. Hell if that were the case, nearly every future surgeon would fail the rotation.

My spidey sense says that disinterested means you had unexcused absences or you were one of those people who vanished after rounds once the attending left. The other evals were decent because nobody likes to say negative about someone, but apparently you ticked off the wrong person along the way.

If you were really treated unfairly, continue to pursue avenues of appeal. Try and collect whatever objective data you can find. If someone claims that you were absent, ask them to pull login records showing that you were present in the hospital. They should even be able to track what records you were viewing at the time. If you were really present and working hard, there should be plenty of objective proof lying around. Hospitals are required to maintain this kind of data so it should be easy for someone in administration to acquire.

 

[IlDestriero]

I feel like there must be more to this story. Was your grade truly based on a single evaluation? What about other attendings? Evaluations from residents? Shelf score?

Exactly. How can you have only presented 2 patients? I presented at least 2 patients a day and answered many questions daily on rounds. I presented 2 new patients every time we were on call.
Is this a DO school?
There's more to the story.

 

[kenjixshadow]

x

 

[evilbooyaa]

I'm in the "There's more to this story than what OP is admitting" camp.