Medical Resident terminated... what happened?

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Sorry for text block but here is the article


The unraveling of Dr. Brian Conor Jacobs’ residency at Hershey Medical Center began with an Oct. 8 email that appeared to be from his supervisor, according to a lawsuit he filed last week.


The email informed him his long-approved paid time off for his brother’s wedding in three days had been revoked, and ended with his supervisor’s signature block. He brushed it off as a phishing attempt and went to the wedding as his brother’s best man, the lawsuit said.


But there was much more behind the email, and it ended up getting him fired from his residency, the lawsuit said.


Jacobs has been fighting since his Oct. 30 termination to convince Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center administrators his ex-girlfriend, a nurse manager at Hershey Medical Center, stole his phone and sent the email from his account, the lawsuit said.


His residency was terminated for “dishonest communications,” according to the lawsuit.


But the administrators wouldn’t give him a fair chance to contest the allegations, he said, leading to him suing three administrators on allegations they violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process during the disciplinary proceedings.


Jacobs says they wouldn’t let him review all the evidence against him, call or cross-examine witnesses, hear a presentation of the case against him and limited him to 15 minutes to defend himself during three different appeals of the decision to terminate his residency.


He’s asking the federal courts for a preliminary injunction to stall all disciplinary measures against him. In the long run, he’d like the court to order his record expunged, his residency restored and unspecified damages.


Jacobs was brought onto Penn State Hershey Medical Center’s Internal Medicine Residency Program in March 2023, and after a year of adequate performance, was renewed for two more years up into 2026.


That was cut short by the email debacle, which stemmed from an effort by Jacobs’ ex-girlfriend and others to harass and embarrass Jacobs, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit claimed the woman was bitter because Jacobs took a medical resident from another hospital to the wedding.


The situation has since “(spiraled) out of control in a way I’ve not encountered before — now involving multiple criminal investigations and law firms,” Jacobs’ attorney wrote in a March 19 email to the medical center’s general counsel.


No criminal charges have been filed against the ex-girlfriend or any of the women alleged to have been involved in the scheme, and none of them were named as defendants in the lawsuit, which focuses solely on how the disciplinary proceedings played out.


But the complaint itself delves into the backstory of how Jacobs says several women, including his ex, conspired against him. The exact circumstances of what caused several women to join together to harm Jacobs is not clear from the lawsuit.


Jacobs’ lawsuit claims the email was but one act of harassment against him.


He said his ex-girlfriend, joined by another employee of Hershey Medical Center, also created false conversations to screenshot and send to others to misrepresent Jacobs, the lawsuit said. They emailed Jacobs’ leasing office to try to cancel his lease, harassed his ex-girlfriends, sent his family HIV kits and cremation kits and sent fake screenshots to his mother to make her think he killed himself, the lawsuit said.


The ex told Jacobs’ mother she called other female employees at the hospital and arranged to meet with them the week before the wedding to discuss a plan of action against Jacobs, the lawsuit said. He used FindMyiPhone to determine his old cell-phone was located outside of the ex’s house.


Jacobs’ ex also reached out to his wedding date after the wedding and admitted to the scheme in text messages, discussing getting their stories straight, according to the lawsuit.


“Just so everyone’s on the same page I’m chalking all of that up to pregnancy and my emotional state. Our story is still good,” the ex wrote in a text message.


“He’s fired, that’s it. What are you still trying to do?” the wedding date texted. “Guys this is (expletive). It’s one email if you just said you wrote it because you were emotionally distraught or pregnant or why ever I think it would be fine.”


“I think it’s too late for that unfortunately,” the ex replied.


Jacobs’ wedding date later provided a written statement saying the ex-girlfriend was trying to “punish (Dr. Jacobs) for personal disputes independent of his professional duties” and that the other women involved tried to “manipulate testimony and shared knowledge of internal investigations” to influence the investigation.


Following Jacobs’ Oct. 30 termination, he appealed to the clinical competency committee at a Nov. 11 hearing. They rejected his appeal.


He appealed again on Jan. 22, and Dr. Nasrollah Ghahramani rejected it. After a March 22 final appeal hearing before Dr. Karl Clebak, the board upheld all prior decisions to terminate Jacobs.


Rebecca Bascom, Jacobs’ academic mentor, wrote an email to Ghahramani in November saying Jacobs was the victim of a “severe pattern of unprofessional behavior and sexual harassment” by another medical center employee.


“Being the victim of sexual harassment from someone with power over you is exceptionally difficult to endure. Gaslighting of victims by the institution compounds the injury,” Bascom said.


She urged the medical center to “ask tough questions and show flexibility in seeking solutions.”


Court documents listed Ghahramani, Clebek, and Dr. Kevin Black, interim vice dean for educational affairs at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, as defendants in the lawsuit.


All three can provide the injunctive relief being sought, the lawsuit said, but Jacobs is only seeking damages from Ghahramani and Clebek.


Penn State University and Penn State Health’s press offices declined to comment on the litigation. PennLive could not reach Jacobs’ attorneys for comment.
 
These women must be in their late 20s or early 30s and must have watched John Tucker must die movie. Ha ha.

Seriously. Women scheming together to get back at their ex. Like Olivia Rodrigo get him back song. Sorry for all these teenage references (I have a soon to be 14 year old daughter) and almost 16 year old son.

He’s dealing with a civil matter. Well 2 civil matters.
1. The ex girlfriend
2. The residency and the academic medical center

There are major holes in the story. I’m assuming hersey pa has QGenda or similar staffing schedules.

If his vacation was revoked. Why did he choose to ignore it? That’s what really got him fired. Regardless if ex girlfriend did something to cause his vacation to be revoked. He should not have gone to the wedding if he didn’t have new approval. That’s where the hole is in the story and what got him fired.
 
The story is bizarre.

How good looking is this guy that he has all these women going nuts over him? I guess he's the 20% of the 80/20 rule.

If they had his old phone, wouldn't he have gotten a new one and deactivated the old one?

Why didn't he know that your typical nurse, not to mention nurse manager, is fairly unhinged? And I say this as someone who generally has a good working relationship with the nurses at my hospital (some are even patients).

His claims should be pretty easy to prove. But I'm also curious why he didn't name the ex or anyone else in his lawsuit.
 
The story is bizarre.

How good looking is this guy that he has all these women going nuts over him? I guess he's the 20% of the 80/20 rule.

If they had his old phone, wouldn't he have gotten a new one and deactivated the old one?

Why didn't he know that your typical nurse, not to mention nurse manager, is fairly unhinged? And I say this as someone who generally has a good working relationship with the nurses at my hospital (some are even patients).

His claims should be pretty easy to prove. But I'm also curious why he didn't name the ex or anyone else in his lawsuit.


He’s the last panel. Judge for yourself.


 
These women must be in their late 20s or early 30s and must have watched John Tucker must die movie. Ha ha.

Seriously. Women scheming together to get back at their ex. Like Olivia Rodrigo get him back song. Sorry for all these teenage references (I have a soon to be 14 year old daughter) and almost 16 year old son.

He’s dealing with a civil matter. Well 2 civil matters.
1. The ex girlfriend
2. The residency and the academic medical center

There are major holes in the story. I’m assuming hersey pa has QGenda or similar staffing schedules.

If his vacation was revoked. Why did he choose to ignore it? That’s what really got him fired. Regardless if ex girlfriend did something to cause his vacation to be revoked. He should not have gone to the wedding if he didn’t have new approval. That’s where the hole is in the story and what got him fired.
From the article:

"The email informed him his long-approved paid time off for his brother’s wedding in three days had been revoked, and ended with his supervisor’s signature block. He brushed it off as a phishing attempt and went to the wedding as his brother’s best man, the lawsuit said."

Yeah, he should have called said supervisor and gotten this straightened out. Seems like the rest of the lawsuit is trying to prove they shouldn't have revoked his PTO, which, even if true, the fact that it doesn't say he did anything other than ignore the e-mail is a problem.

That said, assuming he was in good standing prior to this I'm not sure an immediate firing should have been the first step they took.

The story is bizarre.

How good looking is this guy that he has all these women going nuts over him? I guess he's the 20% of the 80/20 rule.

If they had his old phone, wouldn't he have gotten a new one and deactivated the old one?

Why didn't he know that your typical nurse, not to mention nurse manager, is fairly unhinged? And I say this as someone who generally has a good working relationship with the nurses at my hospital (some are even patients).

His claims should be pretty easy to prove. But I'm also curious why he didn't name the ex or anyone else in his lawsuit.
My first thought too.
 
Sounds like we are getting a mostly 1-sided story here (the resident’s) and no real detail of other issues at play or other violations. We almost certainly won’t unless it fully plays out in the courts (unlikely). The story also doesn’t make any sense - was it really some clandestine effort by a bunch of jilted women? Really? Nurses can be next level petty, but this is a stretch.

But I can tell you programs only terminate residents *mid year* in truly extreme circumstances, and certainly not on a whim. The work load and call implications to the rest may be huge, to give one problem.
 
Very one-sided reporting. I'm sure that the defendants are not allowed to speak about it to defend their reasons and unfortunately there's no way for us to know the real details.
 
"He’s fired, that’s it. What are you still trying to do?” the wedding date texted. “Guys this is (expletive). It’s one email if you just said you wrote it because you were emotionally distraught or pregnant or why ever I think it would be fine.”


“I think it’s too late for that unfortunately,” the ex replied.


Jacobs’ wedding date later provided a written statement saying the ex-girlfriend was trying to “punish (Dr. Jacobs) for personal disputes independent of his professional duties” and that the other women involved tried to “manipulate testimony and shared knowledge of internal investigations” to influence the investigation



I mean... this part here is kind of damning that some sort of manipulation was taking place to screw over the resident
 
It’s definitely not the easiest to fire a resident. It would have to be something super egregious or have a decent amount of documentation on (and documentation can take a lot of time). I would not be surprise if it was a culmination of several things and the wedding and sexual harassment claims were just the final straw that broke the camel back.
 
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Outside of a funeral for a first degree relative (mom,dad, sibling, kids. Spouse). Not some great aunt and not some brother wedding.

If circumstances change where u can’t take time off. Do not take time off without approval. That’s fireable offense. Even if it were preapproved earlier.
 
From the article:

"The email informed him his long-approved paid time off for his brother’s wedding in three days had been revoked, and ended with his supervisor’s signature block. He brushed it off as a phishing attempt and went to the wedding as his brother’s best man, the lawsuit said."

Yeah, he should have called said supervisor and gotten this straightened out. Seems like the rest of the lawsuit is trying to prove they shouldn't have revoked his PTO, which, even if true, the fact that it doesn't say he did anything other than ignore the e-mail is a problem.

That said, assuming he was in good standing prior to this I'm not sure an immediate firing should have been the first step they took.


My first thought too.

Do you guys check your email every day? I dont. Seems like an innocent enough mistake to make by saying.. sorry I didn't get a chance to check my email until afterwards
 
found her. Yall be the judge….
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A woman doesn’t need a man to have a kid these days. If it’s just a child she wants she can just go pick a daddy out of a catalog with a lot better genetics than this dude.
What you are talking about is the fairy tale…. She wants the fairy tale. Delusional and clearly unhinged woman. I hope someone is pursuing charges against her. He’s probably a prick and loser but she’s nuts.
 
Sorry for text block but here is the article


The unraveling of Dr. Brian Conor Jacobs’ residency at Hershey Medical Center began with an Oct. 8 email that appeared to be from his supervisor, according to a lawsuit he filed last week.


The email informed him his long-approved paid time off for his brother’s wedding in three days had been revoked, and ended with his supervisor’s signature block. He brushed it off as a phishing attempt and went to the wedding as his brother’s best man, the lawsuit said.


But there was much more behind the email, and it ended up getting him fired from his residency, the lawsuit said.


Jacobs has been fighting since his Oct. 30 termination to convince Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center administrators his ex-girlfriend, a nurse manager at Hershey Medical Center, stole his phone and sent the email from his account, the lawsuit said.


His residency was terminated for “dishonest communications,” according to the lawsuit.


But the administrators wouldn’t give him a fair chance to contest the allegations, he said, leading to him suing three administrators on allegations they violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process during the disciplinary proceedings.


Jacobs says they wouldn’t let him review all the evidence against him, call or cross-examine witnesses, hear a presentation of the case against him and limited him to 15 minutes to defend himself during three different appeals of the decision to terminate his residency.


He’s asking the federal courts for a preliminary injunction to stall all disciplinary measures against him. In the long run, he’d like the court to order his record expunged, his residency restored and unspecified damages.


Jacobs was brought onto Penn State Hershey Medical Center’s Internal Medicine Residency Program in March 2023, and after a year of adequate performance, was renewed for two more years up into 2026.


That was cut short by the email debacle, which stemmed from an effort by Jacobs’ ex-girlfriend and others to harass and embarrass Jacobs, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit claimed the woman was bitter because Jacobs took a medical resident from another hospital to the wedding.


The situation has since “(spiraled) out of control in a way I’ve not encountered before — now involving multiple criminal investigations and law firms,” Jacobs’ attorney wrote in a March 19 email to the medical center’s general counsel.


No criminal charges have been filed against the ex-girlfriend or any of the women alleged to have been involved in the scheme, and none of them were named as defendants in the lawsuit, which focuses solely on how the disciplinary proceedings played out.


But the complaint itself delves into the backstory of how Jacobs says several women, including his ex, conspired against him. The exact circumstances of what caused several women to join together to harm Jacobs is not clear from the lawsuit.


Jacobs’ lawsuit claims the email was but one act of harassment against him.


He said his ex-girlfriend, joined by another employee of Hershey Medical Center, also created false conversations to screenshot and send to others to misrepresent Jacobs, the lawsuit said. They emailed Jacobs’ leasing office to try to cancel his lease, harassed his ex-girlfriends, sent his family HIV kits and cremation kits and sent fake screenshots to his mother to make her think he killed himself, the lawsuit said.


The ex told Jacobs’ mother she called other female employees at the hospital and arranged to meet with them the week before the wedding to discuss a plan of action against Jacobs, the lawsuit said. He used FindMyiPhone to determine his old cell-phone was located outside of the ex’s house.


Jacobs’ ex also reached out to his wedding date after the wedding and admitted to the scheme in text messages, discussing getting their stories straight, according to the lawsuit.


“Just so everyone’s on the same page I’m chalking all of that up to pregnancy and my emotional state. Our story is still good,” the ex wrote in a text message.


“He’s fired, that’s it. What are you still trying to do?” the wedding date texted. “Guys this is (expletive). It’s one email if you just said you wrote it because you were emotionally distraught or pregnant or why ever I think it would be fine.”


“I think it’s too late for that unfortunately,” the ex replied.


Jacobs’ wedding date later provided a written statement saying the ex-girlfriend was trying to “punish (Dr. Jacobs) for personal disputes independent of his professional duties” and that the other women involved tried to “manipulate testimony and shared knowledge of internal investigations” to influence the investigation.


Following Jacobs’ Oct. 30 termination, he appealed to the clinical competency committee at a Nov. 11 hearing. They rejected his appeal.


He appealed again on Jan. 22, and Dr. Nasrollah Ghahramani rejected it. After a March 22 final appeal hearing before Dr. Karl Clebak, the board upheld all prior decisions to terminate Jacobs.


Rebecca Bascom, Jacobs’ academic mentor, wrote an email to Ghahramani in November saying Jacobs was the victim of a “severe pattern of unprofessional behavior and sexual harassment” by another medical center employee.


“Being the victim of sexual harassment from someone with power over you is exceptionally difficult to endure. Gaslighting of victims by the institution compounds the injury,” Bascom said.


She urged the medical center to “ask tough questions and show flexibility in seeking solutions.”


Court documents listed Ghahramani, Clebek, and Dr. Kevin Black, interim vice dean for educational affairs at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, as defendants in the lawsuit.


All three can provide the injunctive relief being sought, the lawsuit said, but Jacobs is only seeking damages from Ghahramani and Clebek.


Penn State University and Penn State Health’s press offices declined to comment on the litigation. PennLive could not reach Jacobs’ attorneys for comment.
Whatever else was going on...that statement proves that guy is a ****ing ***** and a liar. Ain't NOBODY seeing a email saying PTO has revoked and brush it off as a phishing attempt...that just don't fly.
 
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Do you guys check your email every day? I dont. Seems like an innocent enough mistake to make by saying.. sorry I didn't get a chance to check my email until afterwards
I do, and technically many contracts require you to though I've never seen it enforced for attendings.

But he admitted that he read it and then disregarded it. That's a whole different thing.
 
A woman doesn’t need a man to have a kid these days. If it’s just a child she wants she can just go pick a daddy out of a catalog with a lot better genetics than this dude.
What you are talking about is the fairy tale…. She wants the fairy tale. Delusional and clearly unhinged woman. I hope someone is pursuing charges against her. He’s probably a prick and loser but she’s nuts.
I just don't see enough evidence against Conor to ruin his career and life. Sure, maybe he gets a suspension and extends his Residency by 3 months but to get kicked out for going to his brother's weeding seems way to extreme to me. As for the other "claims" against him they seem made up and bogus based on a personal vendetta. Conor Jacobs has a strong case against Penn State and those that ruined his career.
 
From the article:

"The email informed him his long-approved paid time off for his brother’s wedding in three days had been revoked, and ended with his supervisor’s signature block. He brushed it off as a phishing attempt and went to the wedding as his brother’s best man, the lawsuit said."

Yeah, he should have called said supervisor and gotten this straightened out. Seems like the rest of the lawsuit is trying to prove they shouldn't have revoked his PTO, which, even if true, the fact that it doesn't say he did anything other than ignore the e-mail is a problem.

That said, assuming he was in good standing prior to this I'm not sure an immediate firing should have been the first step they took.


My first thought too.
Eh, residency has become a game of "should I take PTO, or fake sick, to do this thing I want to do?"



Revoking someone's agreed upon PTO is a pretty low blow for a basically powerless employee population. I hope Hershey medical center has to sell all their chocolate fountains to set this guy up for life when he gets his settlement.
 
Eh, residency has become a game of "should I take PTO, or fake sick, to do this thing I want to do?"



Revoking someone's agreed upon PTO is a pretty low blow for a basically powerless employee population. I hope Hershey medical center has to sell all their chocolate fountains to set this guy up for life when he gets his settlement.
Oh it definitely was a ****ty move, no question. Hopefully there's something in his contract/employee handbook about when/how you take away preciously approved PTO that they didn't do.

Outside of an actual emergency with multiple other residents, I can't imagine revoking PTO this last minute.
 
Eh, residency has become a game of "should I take PTO, or fake sick, to do this thing I want to do?"



Revoking someone's agreed upon PTO is a pretty low blow for a basically powerless employee population. I hope Hershey medical center has to sell all their chocolate fountains to set this guy up for life when he gets his settlement.

I dont know how much liability they would have as a state institution. I hear it is difficult to sue such places.
 
This all sounds very weird to where I feel like several details and prior incidents surely have to be missing. No way a dude gets fired for something like this right off the bat. If he went through the proper process (requesting time off months in advance), revoking PTO 3 days before he’s the best man in his brother’s wedding is completely inexcusable. Hell, a few years back my program tried to tell me to come in on a weekend I was off (wasn’t PTO and I had no plans, just an off weekend and I wasn’t a jeopardy/risk backup resident) and I told them to kick rocks, I can’t imagine a program trying something like that when you have that big of an event coming up. If he’s telling the truth, I hope he wins a lot of money from them based on that transgression alone.
 
Why would you revoke vacation for a guy to go to his brother’s wedding, in which he is supposed to be Best Man?? I dunno who is lying or if the guy had other issues, or what, but that’s almost like telling someone they can’t go to a parent’s or sibling’s funeral—-pretty big deal.

Anyway, if these “mean girls” actually exist, I doubt they were savvy enough to completely cover their digital footprints. Ought to be able to be proved, or disproved, in short order..
 
This all sounds very weird to where I feel like several details and prior incidents surely have to be missing. No way a dude gets fired for something like this right off the bat. If he went through the proper process (requesting time off months in advance), revoking PTO 3 days before he’s the best man in his brother’s wedding is completely inexcusable. Hell, a few years back my program tried to tell me to come in on a weekend I was off (wasn’t PTO and I had no plans, just an off weekend and I wasn’t a jeopardy/risk backup resident) and I told them to kick rocks, I can’t imagine a program trying something like that when you have that big of an event coming up. If he’s telling the truth, I hope he wins a lot of money from them based on that transgression alone.
Honestly having been a chief resident it would not surprise me at all to find out this dude was Jeopardy or back-up.

In my experience number of people who thing they’re on “second Jeopardy” and decide to plan a vacation or weekend trip without swapping with anybody because “oh I rarely get called in” is astounding, and then they flip their **** when they inevitably get called in
 
Honestly having been a chief resident it would not surprise me at all to find out this dude was Jeopardy or back-up.

In my experience number of people who thing they’re on “second Jeopardy” and decide to plan a vacation or weekend trip without swapping with anybody because “oh I rarely get called in” is astounding, and then they flip their **** when they inevitably get called in

But it said he was PTO.
 
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we are missing so many details with the supposed pre approved pto.

1. Did the ex gf email the pd/chiefs pto wasn’t needed anymore and the dude didn’t know his email got sent. She likely deleted the email sent if she did it. So no way of him knowing she did this.

So she may have sent it and he never would have known

But the Pd or the chiefs who approved pto gotta have the sent email deleting pto request. That’s all that’s needed.
 
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Honestly having been a chief resident it would not surprise me at all to find out this dude was Jeopardy or back-up.

In my experience number of people who thing they’re on “second Jeopardy” and decide to plan a vacation or weekend trip without swapping with anybody because “oh I rarely get called in” is astounding, and then they flip their **** when they inevitably get called in
Yep, when I was a CA1 the seniors could take back-up call from home. One guy gambled and got called in for a c section at 4am and had to admit he was at the airport for an early flight.