MS4 Dismissed - Please Help

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Cheating on an online quiz? Welcome to what a lot of students have probably done. Hell, higher level anatomy class of mine had online exams, from a Q Bank but most were similar enough and we had assigned times to go do them. Thats basically a recipe for cheating especially with a small group of friends working through the test.

Like others have said, something is definitely up. I can't really think of any logical reason why any medical school would want to throw out a M4 over ONE incident, since thats all weve heard on the OPs behalf. Either that school runs the tightest operation known to mankind, or this was just the final "**** this and **** you, get out" incident.
 
Affiche said:
As a non-traditional student, I feel compelled to chime in and point out that schoolwork is very different than job work. In one instance, not handling your responsibilities affects you. In the other, it also affects your coworkers and patients. I agree that cheating is wrong (I think everyone here does?) but to compare it to how one treats their actual employment is poor extrapolation at best. After all, the most impressive nurse in our department is someone who you all would have sent to the guillotine had you known her as a student.

And finally, no one here is defending cheating. We all believe it's wrong. The differing opinions here are because we disagree about how severe the punishment for cheating should be.
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My biases are probably showing. When I have a resident who gets into trouble for cheating / lying / etc, universally there's some history of cheating or similar behavior prior. Sometimes it was a "one time deal" so we decided to take the resident, other times it was buried and only after I contact the school does it become clear. But this is a Sensitivity / Specificity issue -- just because all residents who run into professional problems in residency have "cheated" in medical school doesn't mean that all who "cheat" in medical school will run into problems in residency.

I do agree that getting kicked out seems a bit harsh, and there may be more to the story.

dadaddadaBATMAN said:
You brought up a couple of things that bring residents to your attention (cutting corners, not showing up, lying). Are those a top 3 for dismissal, or is there a better set?

Morbid curiosity.
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That, and poor clinical skills.

Merely said:
Give me a break. If you think it's morally acceptable to destroy someone's entire life over cheating on an online quiz, you're either out of touch or very very callous. What's the kid about to do now with 150k in debt, no degree, no job? Give him a second chance damn it's not like he killed someone. People are driving drunk and graduating ffs
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You bring up two points here. First, I disagree with your statement that the school is "destroying their life". First of all, the student was the person that cheated -- they are the one that caused this, not the school. Second, being dropped from medical school does not "destroy their life". Sure, it's a huge problem and will have huge financial and other impacts. But they can live a full and happy life.

The second issue is more complicated -- DWI's. I agree with you that DWI's are completely unacceptable. When I am planning on driving home, I drink no alcohol at all. I have a huge problem with the idea of guessing how many drinks you can have and stay below the legal limit -- drinking just isn't important enough to take any risk. And, although the limit may be 0.08, I'm sure there's some impairment at 0.07 also. All that said, a DWI usually occurs when someone is "off work". I have had one resident have a DWI, and although I was incredibly disappointed, my feeling was that it was none of my business, since it happened when they were off. If it had happened while they were traveling for work, then they would have been fired or put on leave, probably fired. Alcoholism is a disability under the ADA, which also makes the situation complicated.
 
aProgDirector said:
You bring up two points here. First, I disagree with your statement that the school is "destroying their life". First of all, the student was the person that cheated -- they are the one that caused this, not the school. Second, being dropped from medical school does not "destroy their life". Sure, it's a huge problem and will have huge financial and other impacts. But they can live a full and happy life.
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I agree that the student caused it, but I think the punishment has to fit the crime. Leaving someone with no degree and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt without a way to find employment is not suitable punishment for cheating on a single online quiz. It's even worse because the charge of academic dishonesty will make it quite difficult to gain admission into any other professional school. Employers may consider that a red flag as well. I really hope there's more to the story than the OP has told us.
 
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tennischamp822 said:
Agreed, but the courts make it almost impossible for universities to get challenged for their bad behavior. It is incredibly costly and you as the student will probably get steamrolled by words like "professionalism".

This would be okay if the schools were fair, but there are more than a few instances when the schools aren't fair, which leaves students out of time, money and options. It's absurd.
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Universities lose every time they don't follow protocol (in minute detail!). That's why we turned OP to the Student Handbook. Heck, the university lawyers won't even argue the case if every rule was not followed exactly.
 
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chipwhitley said:
I agree that the student caused it, but I think the punishment has to fit the crime. Leaving someone with no degree and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt without a way to find employment is not suitable punishment for cheating on a single online quiz. It's even worse because the charge of academic dishonesty will make it quite difficult to gain admission into any other professional school. Employers may consider that a red flag as well. I really hope there's more to the story than the OP has told us.
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as it should.

Look, if you get booted for cheating, you didn't earn the degree, period.
 
Psai said:
You know, I can't think of a single time when someone posted about something here and the real story didn't come out. Maybe it's recall bias though
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I didn't exactly have the smoothest med school experience, to put it lightly. However, I was smart enough to stay off of SDN while that was going on.
 
I think what's bothersome about this is that, forget the ethics of cheating, you're an MS3/4. You've theoretically taken step 1, isn't that kind of the time to fly right so you don't F*** it up in the mean time?

I think everyone on here is in agreement that the punishment seems a little severe (spent a lot of time thinking about this) given the crime. So...if you're already on the radar, isn't that REALLY the time to fly right?

Forget the ethics side of this, it's more a reflection of monumentally crappy judgment. That, I find concerning.
 
Is there an honor code? Don't know for sure, but it certainly seems that way.
Did the OP cheat? Yep.
Should he be expelled? Yep, assuming that's what the honor code calls for. They're usually pretty simple. "I won't lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those that do."
Should the faculty or honor committee care that the kid is an MS4 or $200k in debt? Nope. They have an honor code and the student failed to adhere to it. In fact if they overlooked the cheating violation, they themselves would be in violation of the honor code and they should leave as well.


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Il Destriero
 
IlDestriero said:
Is there an honor code? Don't know for sure, but it certainly seems that way.
Did the OP cheat? Yep.
Should he be expelled? Yep, assuming that's what the honor code calls for. They're usually pretty simple. "I won't lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those that do."
Should the faculty or honor committee care that the kid is an MS4 or $200k in debt? Nope. They have an honor code and the student failed to adhere to it. In fact if they overlooked the cheating violation, they themselves would be in violation of the honor code and they should leave as well.


--
Il Destriero
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That's an interesting point. The honor code applies to faculty, employees and students. I think you're the only person that's brought that up so far. Kudos.
 
IlDestriero said:
Is there an honor code? Don't know for sure, but it certainly seems that way.
Did the OP cheat? Yep.
Should he be expelled? Yep, assuming that's what the honor code calls for. They're usually pretty simple. "I won't lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those that do."
Should the faculty or honor committee care that the kid is an MS4 or $200k in debt? Nope. They have an honor code and the student failed to adhere to it. In fact if they overlooked the cheating violation, they themselves would be in violation of the honor code and they should leave as well.


--
Il Destriero
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There's a reason for why zero tolerance policies don't work in schools. It makes no sense to expel both people when one kid is the clear aggressor. And yet it's the policy because it makes people's jobs easy. You don't have to think, just follow policy. There are mistakes that people make that should be punished heavily and those that shouldn't. Do you think that people speeding 1 mph over the limit should be ticketed every single time they break the law?
 
IlDestriero said:
Is there an honor code? Don't know for sure, but it certainly seems that way.
Did the OP cheat? Yep.
Should he be expelled? Yep, assuming that's what the honor code calls for. They're usually pretty simple. "I won't lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those that do."
Should the faculty or honor committee care that the kid is an MS4 or $200k in debt? Nope. They have an honor code and the student failed to adhere to it. In fact if they overlooked the cheating violation, they themselves would be in violation of the honor code and they should leave as well.


--
Il Destriero
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Most of these student handbooks that list out the expectations and penalties are very, very broad, giving a lot more flexibility than what you allude to. For my medical school for example, the dean of student affairs could (after investigation) levy penalties ranging from probation, formal reprimand into the file, a mandatory leave of absence, to expulsion. If dismissal was recommended, the handbook had a multiple page description of the proper formal procedure that the school had to follow under those circumstances.

I honestly doubt the OPs school was much different. If this really was a first offense, they almost certainly had options.
 
Psai said:
There's a reason for why zero tolerance policies don't work in schools. It makes no sense to expel both people when one kid is the clear aggressor. And yet it's the policy because it makes people's jobs easy. You don't have to think, just follow policy. There are mistakes that people make that should be punished heavily and those that shouldn't. Do you think that people speeding 1 mph over the limit should be ticketed every single time they break the law?
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It depends upon whether you want people driving over the speed limit. If you got a ticket every single time you went 1 mph over the speed limit, you'd make sure you always drove 5 mph less than the speed limit, just to be sure.

But this is clearly an area of extreme complexity. A zero tolerance policy is easy to implement, you just follow the rules. A policy that allows for flexibility allows unfair application -- just look at sentencing for crimes by the court. When you have mandatory minimum sentences, some people get what appear to be unfair, yet "legal" sentences. But when you let judges decide, sometimes there's a concern that some judges will apply the law differently, perhaps depending on implicit biases.
 
There are 3 components of an honor code hearing that have to be proven. I lived under the single sanction. My .mil time had a much larger grey zone to honor issues.
1. Was there a violation?
2. Was there intent?
3. Does it meet the minimum threshold?
Forgetting to cite a source is quite different than copying someone's essay or presenting someone else's idea as your own.
You can lose track of expenses and bounce a rent check or you can be caught check kiting.
Deliberately participating on either end of cheating on an a quiz is quite black and white. Both are deliberate dishonorable acts that clearly violate the code. Adios amigo.


--
Il Destriero
 
Psai said:
You know, I can't think of a single time when someone posted about something here and the real story didn't come out. Maybe it's recall bias though
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I can. BonesDO was a perfect example of someone who pretty much stated the truth of his dismissal from medical schools. He in fact got into another DO school and is currently in residency. The thing is that people are so used to people not explaining the whole story that they don't believe outliers exist. I don't mean to say that one should not err on the side of skepticism, but too much of it can also be bad.
 
IslandStyle808 said:
I can. BonesDO was a perfect example of someone who pretty much stated the truth of his dismissal from medical schools. He in fact got into another DO school and is currently in residency. The thing is that people are so used to people not explaining the whole story that they don't believe outliers exist. I don't mean to say that one should not err on the side of skepticism, but too much of it can also be bad.
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BonesDO also wasn't dismissed for professionalism issues - it's comparing apples to oranges.
 
But didn't Bones get dismissed for academic reasons?

IslandStyle808 said:
I can. BonesDO was a perfect example of someone who pretty much stated the truth of his dismissal from medical schools. He in fact got into another DO school and is currently in residency. The thing is that people are so used to people not explaining the whole story that they don't believe outliers exist. I don't mean to say that one should not err on the side of skepticism, but too much of it can also be bad.
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Walter Lance said:
BonesDO also wasn't dismissed for professionalism issues - it's comparing apples to oranges.
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Goro said:
But didn't Bones get dismissed for academic reasons?
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Correct it was dismissal due to one class failure. However, the response was to 'stories don't match up to what really happened every time on SDN.' The reality is that there are stories do match up, but in rare instances. While not the norm, we shouldn't dismiss them too readily. Otherwise we may not give them the advice they truly deserve. I never brought up the example earlier because it wasn't an apples to apples comparison, as stated by Walter Lance.
 
Psai said:
Because the things coming out of your mouth are wrong. Because you have no experience and no perspective. Because you are a year or two behind.
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I don't know if this is known in the allopathic circle but any person who says or uses phrases like "DOMore" or "JustDoIt" in allusion to the DO degree is always an insufferable douche. The fact that this poster is also sporting a "Medical Student (Accepted)" status makes this a case of dual pathognomonic signs. You are wasting your breath.
 
jw3600 said:
I don't know if this is known in the allopathic circle but any person who says or uses phrases like "DOMore" or "JustDoIt" in allusion to the DO degree is always an insufferable douche. The fact that this poster is also sporting a "Medical Student (Accepted)" status makes this a case of dual pathognomonic signs. You are wasting your breath.
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You're totally right. But when I was an insufferable know-it-all premed, I remember people here spending time wasting their breath telling me exactly how wrong I was. I appreciate it now and I pay it forward. It's actually still happening as people like southernsurgeon, goro, and law2doc disagree with me and I refuse to change my mind but I know enough now that I'll probably end up seeing things their way in a few years.
 
jw3600 said:
I don't know if this is known in the allopathic circle but any person who says or uses phrases like "DOMore" or "JustDoIt" in allusion to the DO degree is always an insufferable douche. The fact that this poster is also sporting a "Medical Student (Accepted)" status makes this a case of dual pathognomonic signs. You are wasting your breath.
Click to expand...
Am I losing my mind or have I seen you trolling DO's in general?
 
jw3600 said:
I don't know if this is known in the allopathic circle but any person who says or uses phrases like "DOMore" or "JustDoIt" in allusion to the DO degree is always an insufferable douche. The fact that this poster is also sporting a "Medical Student (Accepted)" status makes this a case of dual pathognomonic signs. You are wasting your breath.
Click to expand...

Also...in MY experience (though I'm only accepted, so that obviously means I have NONE) anyone that uses words like pathognomonic...typically an insufferable douche. But keep on keeping on.
 
Psai said:
You're totally right. But when I was an insufferable know-it-all premed, I remember people here spending time wasting their breath telling me exactly how wrong I was. I appreciate it now and I pay it forward. It's actually still happening as people like southernsurgeon, goro, and law2doc disagree with me and I refuse to change my mind but I know enough now that I'll probably end up seeing things their way in a few years.
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2/3 of those names I agree with. One of them has a bias that strongly clouds their judgement.
 
JustDOit2020 said:
Also...in MY experience (though I'm only accepted, so that obviously means I have NONE) anyone that uses words like pathognomonic...typically an insufferable douche. But keep on keeping on.
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That anti-intellectual attitude will get you far in medicine.


--
Il Destriero
 
JustDOit2020 said:
Also...in MY experience (though I'm only accepted, so that obviously means I have NONE) anyone that uses words like pathognomonic...typically an insufferable douche. But keep on keeping on.
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Nah, you have to use doctor talk eventually or people will think you are an idiot
 
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IlDestriero said:
Is there an honor code? Don't know for sure, but it certainly seems that way.
Did the OP cheat? Yep.
Should he be expelled? Yep, assuming that's what the honor code calls for. They're usually pretty simple. "I won't lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those that do."
Should the faculty or honor committee care that the kid is an MS4 or $200k in debt? Nope. They have an honor code and the student failed to adhere to it. In fact if they overlooked the cheating violation, they themselves would be in violation of the honor code and they should leave as well.


--
Il Destriero
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I suppose you are a fan of the proposed wall on our southern border - another zero tolerance policy.
 
WingedOx said:
as it should.

Look, if you get booted for cheating, you didn't earn the degree, period.
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Well if you booted everyone for a single instance of cheating (on an online quiz, mind you!) there would be almost no one left in medical school.
 
Goro said:
Agree 100% that this was a draconian punishment. No argument there.

IF this is a first time offence, I surmise that there are schools out there that have honor codes as stringent as the service academies:"A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those that do".
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The service academy code is pretty extreme. If they followed that at my school I could be dismissed for not turning in my classmates who didn't do a reading a assignment and didn't raise their hands when a lecturer asked who hadn't done the reading. I hope that this is not a common policy in medical schools.
 
aProgDirector said:
My biases are probably showing. When I have a resident who gets into trouble for cheating / lying / etc, universally there's some history of cheating or similar behavior prior. Sometimes it was a "one time deal" so we decided to take the resident, other times it was buried and only after I contact the school does it become clear. But this is a Sensitivity / Specificity issue -- just because all residents who run into professional problems in residency have "cheated" in medical school doesn't mean that all who "cheat" in medical school will run into problems in residency.

I do agree that getting kicked out seems a bit harsh, and there may be more to the story.



That, and poor clinical skills.



You bring up two points here. First, I disagree with your statement that the school is "destroying their life". First of all, the student was the person that cheated -- they are the one that caused this, not the school. Second, being dropped from medical school does not "destroy their life". Sure, it's a huge problem and will have huge financial and other impacts. But they can live a full and happy life.

The second issue is more complicated -- DWI's. I agree with you that DWI's are completely unacceptable. When I am planning on driving home, I drink no alcohol at all. I have a huge problem with the idea of guessing how many drinks you can have and stay below the legal limit -- drinking just isn't important enough to take any risk. And, although the limit may be 0.08, I'm sure there's some impairment at 0.07 also. All that said, a DWI usually occurs when someone is "off work". I have had one resident have a DWI, and although I was incredibly disappointed, my feeling was that it was none of my business, since it happened when they were off. If it had happened while they were traveling for work, then they would have been fired or put on leave, probably fired. Alcoholism is a disability under the ADA, which also makes the situation complicated.
Click to expand...

Off topic, but research has shown that after a 24-30 hour call, both higher cognitive and reflexes deteriorate to the level of driving under the influence or worse. What are your thoughts with residents driving home post-call. Do you mandate your residents sleep in-house for a certain number of hours prior to leaving the hospital? And if they dont, would you fire them for placing the safety of other motorists at risk?

I've heard residents get into trouble with their own program director when they get into accidents. Rather than empathy and changing work hours, it seems like they get berated and blamed instead.

GUH said:
The service academy code is pretty extreme. If they followed that at my school I could be dismissed for not turning in my classmates who didn't do a reading a assignment and didn't raise their hands when a lecturer asked who hadn't done the reading. I hope that this is not a common policy in medical schools.
Click to expand...

I am surprised there are any students left given the way some administrators run their school.
 
Goro said:
Only took 4 pages to get to Burnett 's law.
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Was trying to inject some humor into the conversation, but it is a valid comparison. Zero tolerance rarely makes sense. There's a huge difference between someone driving 1 mph over the speed limit and 50 mph over. Just as there's a huge difference between someone cheating once on a take home quiz vs cheating on a major exam, or repeated incidents of cheating. The punishment should fit the crime
 
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chipwhitley said:
Was trying to inject some humor into the conversation, but it is a valid comparison. Zero tolerance rarely makes sense. There's a huge difference between someone driving 1 mph over the speed limit and 50 mph over. Just as there's a huge difference between someone cheating once on a take home quiz vs cheating on a major exam, or repeated incidents of cheating. The punishment should fit the crime
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At a single sanction school, the punishment did fit the crime. The OP isn't back to flesh out what happened, so who knows and they're likely a troll anyway.


--
Il Destriero
 
IlDestriero said:
At a single sanction school, the punishment did fit the crime. The OP isn't back to flesh out what happened, so who knows and they're likely a troll anyway.


--
Il Destriero
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Whether or not the punishment fit the crime is dependent on the punishment and the crime, not whether or not the school has a single-sanction policy. Come on now, slaves used to get their hands chopped off for learning to read. Does the fact that their owner's had a single-sanction policy mean that the punishment was suiting? Of course not.

If the OP's school has a single sanction policy that sucks, because the punishments inherently won't fit all crimes committed. But, it is what it is and there's nothing we can do about it except quit endorsing such policies.
 
Affiche said:
Whether or not the punishment fit the crime is dependent on the punishment and the crime, not whether or not the school has a single-sanction policy. Come on now, slaves used to get their hands chopped off for learning to read. Does the fact that their owner's had a single-sanction policy mean that the punishment was suiting? Of course not.

If the OP's school has a single sanction policy that sucks, because the punishments inherently won't fit all crimes committed. But, it is what it is and there's nothing we can do about it except quit endorsing such policies.
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Okay again...we took it a little far with comparing dismissal for cheating to cutting the hand off a slave who learned to read.
 
Affiche said:
I think you don't grasp the implications of your posts.

It was an example of when the same logic resulted in immoral behavior.
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You're worried about the logic behind a post on SDN leading to "immoral behavior" (such as cutting the hand off a slave that learned to read), but actually cheating doesn't bother you...because that kind of behavior could NEVER lead to anything immoral.
 
JustDOit2020 said:
You're worried about the logic behind a post on SDN leading to "immoral behavior" (such as cutting the hand off a slave that learned to read), but actually cheating doesn't bother you...because that kind of behavior could NEVER lead to anything immoral.
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Your reading comprehension is deplorable. I've said multiple times in this thread that I agree cheating is wrong, it's the severity of the punishment we're disagreeing about. But okay, keep making ridiculous posts.
 
Just leaving this here...

3q3bvxxf-1353902236.jpg

strawman.jpg



Carry on! :angelic:
 
WingedOx said:
I didn't exactly have the smoothest med school experience, to put it lightly. However, I was smart enough to stay off of SDN while that was going on.
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Exactly. Without getting into details, I had some choppy waters for sure in both med school and fellowship. In neither of those situations was it my first impulse to post on SDN.
 
bannie22 said:
Off topic, but research has shown that after a 24-30 hour call, both higher cognitive and reflexes deteriorate to the level of driving under the influence or worse. What are your thoughts with residents driving home post-call. Do you mandate your residents sleep in-house for a certain number of hours prior to leaving the hospital? And if they dont, would you fire them for placing the safety of other motorists at risk?

I've heard residents get into trouble with their own program director when they get into accidents. Rather than empathy and changing work hours, it seems like they get berated and blamed instead.
Click to expand...

I've removed almost all of the 24 hour call from my program for this exact reason. There is a bit left -- mainly because my residents keep telling me that they want at least some 24 hour call for the experience. In the 2 rotations that still have 24 hour call, the resident is very likely to get several hours of sleep.

If one of my residents were to get into an accident post call, they would absolutely not get any crap from me about it. I'd remove the rest of 24 hour shifts and be done with it.
 
MediCane2006 said:
Exactly. Without getting into details, I had some choppy waters for sure in both med school and fellowship. In neither of those situations was it my first impulse to post on SDN.
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I've always wondered if I created a burner account and posted my story as an angsty MS3 what type of reaction I'd get.
 
WingedOx said:
I've always wondered if I created a burner account and posted my story as an angsty MS3 what type of reaction I'd get.
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If you ever decide to, please let me know.

I've got a great - "just failed head and neck anatomy, want to be a craniofacial surgeon help!" thread I could post if I ever decide to go that route....
 
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