How does one's reputation precedes them?

[gutonc]

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I probably should have rephrased that as “your experience doesn’t necessarily reflect everyone else’s”.

Based on my own experience and those close to me (never mind everyone on SDN and other places), I don't doubt anyone's experience at any point of the med ed journey, from pre-med to PD. They range from fantastic to borderline criminal. The best we can do at this point is support each other and do what we can to improve the future.

I do feel like @Neuronix 's experience is something that can only hurt med ed all the way around and I hope his new institution manages it better for both trainees and attendings.

 

[operaman]

I remember being told long ago that there is no physician more unhappy than a mediocre academic.

By the simple law of averages, most academic docs are just that: mediocre, average. The superstars get their funded labs and endowed chairs and protected time. The rest get heaps of uncompensated work, publication pressures, and a fraction of what they could earn in the private world.

I suspect this is where much of the malignancy comes from when it happens. While some of the average academics find happiness in their scholarly pursuits or practice subspecialty fields that simply can’t exist in the private world, others take their unhappiness out on trainees.

Some departments are notoriously harder on their faculty than others. I remember on the job hunt there were some that had fairly mild academic expectations and then others who flat out said “we expect a minimum of 50 papers published in the first 5 years,” plus grant funding to support your salary.

I suspect many of the horror stories we hear go back to an institutional or departmental culture that creates them.

 

[hallowmann]

I remember being told long ago that there is no physician more unhappy than a mediocre academic.

By the simple law of averages, most academic docs are just that: mediocre, average. The superstars get their funded labs and endowed chairs and protected time. The rest get heaps of uncompensated work, publication pressures, and a fraction of what they could earn in the private world.

I suspect this is where much of the malignancy comes from when it happens. While some of the average academics find happiness in their scholarly pursuits or practice subspecialty fields that simply can’t exist in the private world, others take their unhappiness out on trainees.

Some departments are notoriously harder on their faculty than others. I remember on the job hunt there were some that had fairly mild academic expectations and then others who flat out said “we expect a minimum of 50 papers published in the first 5 years,” plus grant funding to support your salary.

I suspect many of the horror stories we hear go back to an institutional or departmental culture that creates them.

While this may be true for a lot of people, I have a lot of experience engaging in academia both medically and otherwise, and I have seen people who are superstars academically, intellectually and professionally be degraded and ultimately leave academia because of very average but politically savvy academics above them.

Not in medicine, but medicine adjacent, my own wife in academia was put through hell by her supervisor, who generally was mediocre in the sense of funding, production and endowment, but was primarily promoted to his position due to his propensity to network with the right people. This is despite her being incredibly productive from both a funding and publication standpoint and doing cutting edge work with very few (at the time) people skilled in the field. She actually had just secured years of additional competitive funding shortly before she left academia because of his treatment.

I mention all this to say, academia (like a lot of industries) is also just an established and entrenched "old boys' club", and sometimes doing well academically has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with your gender, your ethnicity, and who you know.

 

[SpoiledMilk]

Notified that HR resolution finally happened. The resident received a letter of warning in their personnel file for unprofessionalism.

Correct me if I’m wrong but this letter does not show up for the prospective employer to see when the resident applies for their first contract.

Nevertheless they have made such a fool of themselves that they will not be getting a job at our residency hospital system for sure. The PD and faculty won’t likely be writing them glowing reference letters either.