Not that I'm in EM, but I saw this thread on the "New Posts" section and wanted to comment because the type of thinking I see on this thread drives me nuts.
With regards to the OP, most people immediately distrusted him/her and had suspicions about their motivation. Stop and ask yourselves why. As medical students and residents, we are basically all people who "follow the rules" and therefore we side with the institutions (medical schools and residency programs) over those who we perceive as "disgrunted individuals." But it's not for any good reason. In my life, I've experienced a number of times when, for whatever reason, a conversation between residents drifts to talk about a resident who has been kicked out of a program. And universally, the residents will all agree that it was the resident's fault and side with the program. Which is really rather silly because it presupposes that the program is moral and "good," even when you know it's not.
For example, as a surgery resident, with work hours restrictions, there are programs who violate them, either currently or in the past. And it's always "unofficial" because a resident can't report it. I mean, you could, but 99% of the time you'd just be shooting yourself in the foot because it takes an incredibly strong person to fight a residency program, even if they are in the right. So what happens? Most people just say "we'll accept the rule-breaking of the program and just rationalize it by saying that people who complain are whiners or are not team players." So even though the program has committed the violation, the residents perceive people who disagree as "the problem." That's generally how things work in residency and medical school.
As another example, training programs take lots of preliminary residents solely for labor. In other words, they don't really care about their qualifications and know for a fact that they're not going to be able to continue training. As proof, I submit that my residency program routinely accepted for preliminary years residents who could barely speak English. No rational person would do that, as even attendings and co-residents had problems communicating basic ideas to them. They were there merely to fill call schedules. Now, that's bad for everyone. Bad for the resident, who is wasting their time chasing an imaginary carrot while being beaten down daily for something that really isn't their fault -- I couldn't complete a year of residency in a place where I didn't know the language. Bad for the other residents, who have to cover for that resident. Bad for the patients, who are receiving sub-optimal care when they have to interact with that resident. Now, if programs were as ethical and "good" as everyone subconsciously believes them to be, that would never occur. There are other ways to bridge that gap, including hiring PAs and NPs to take some burden off residents. But that, of course, involves money and so the cheapest way to go is to continue things the way they are. That's hardly ethical.
My point is merely to say that an innate distrust of "disgruntled individuals" is not always fair. In fact, posting on boards such as this may be what they perceive to be their only recourse. What power does an individual have? If they complain to the public, chances are most people won't even understand what they are talking about. Forums such as this are their only way to communicate to their peers and to express their frustration and anger with a situation.
Keep in mind that even hospitals are guilty of these things. As an attending, I worked at a hospital with a group of surgeons who were horrible. They were fine technical surgeons, but that was about it. They didn't care to see their patients, they openly expressed that rounding was not a surgeon's job, and they would ignore problems that they considered "beneath them." And yet they've been around as a group for decades. You will never know the inner workings of a hospital or a medical school or a residency program until you're inside of it. Period. So I caution everyone here, not just for this thread, but also for the future, to keep that in mind.
My two cents.
