Fellowship Interview-Missing Rotation Time

[anonperson]

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I'm currently applying/interviewing for fellowship in a moderately competitive field. I'm on my sub specialty block (REI) which is generally a pretty chill block which is when fellowship interviews are currently. I'm coming from a small community program which hasn't matched many people in fellowship so I've been going to a fair amount of interviews based on advice from my chair/PD.

My attending on my subspecialty block is being a pain in the ass and is pissed I'm missing all of this time. It's a completely outpatient rotation in a private office where I have little if any real clinical role. All of my interview time off has been approved by my PD and I saved up all of my vacation time this year in order to go on these interviews so it's not as though I'm taking time off in excess of what is generally allowed. This attending is threatening to fail me now because of these interviews.

My PD is in the process of figuring out what to do in this situation (experienced as an attending but first year as a PD).

Anyone else run into this kind of bs?

 

[NotAProgDirector]

I can understand why your preceptor is angry. They expected a resident who was engaged, interested in the material, and present. Your multiple absences, something that is completely out of your control and not your fault, send the opposite message.

The mistake here was sending you to this rotation at all. I sometimes have a resident who has so many interviews in a block that, including travel time, they miss more than 50% of the assigned time. In that case, we usually pull them out of the rotation and build some sort of "self learning" type block. Or, we find a rotation where showing up once in a while for a shift works fine -- like in the ED for example. Alternatively, your PD could have contacted this preceptor beforehand, explained the situation, apologized, asked if it was acceptable to continue, etc.

One other helpful tidbit -- my rules are written such that your rotation preceptors / supervisors don't "fail" you. They evaluate you. I then take all of the evaluations from each block and decide whether you get credit for the block. This helps in two scenarios -- the one you're describing (preceptor says you fail for not showing up, but I say you pass because I approved all of this and your performance, other than your absences, is fine), and the one where you should fail a rotation but your evaluators are too nice (in that case, usually some evaluators give you a "failing" score, but others a passing score. Resident argues that the average is a pass. I get to look at the whole situation and make a determination).

Needless to say, any setup can be abused and isn't perfect.