Professionalism Issue - am I screwed?

[Dares Dareson]

First off, if you want to troll me, go ahead. I'm not looking to argue who is right or wrong, I'm just looking to genuinely know how this will affect my residency application. For those of you who want to schadenfreude out on my problem, go right ahead.

Long story short, in my Family Medicine clerkship, I was given two unprofessional marks for "failing to be a team player" and "being uncivil" from a resident who essentially just does not like me. Coupled with a third unprofessional mark for turning in a late preceptor evaluation, I have one mark too many.

The way my school works is, if you get more than 2 marks, you get a CP grade for conditional pass, which means you have to repeat 4 weeks of the 8 week clerkship, which if you complete your grade is changed to "CP/P" and you pass.

Also, on my dean's letter there will be a paragraph from the family medicine director saying "The student received two unprofessional marks for failing to be a team player and being uncivil. He was receptive to feedback and changed his behavior, however." or something to that effect.

So my question is, will this affect my chance of landing a residency? I was looking towards General or Vascular Surgery, or possibly EM. My Step 1 was 235 and I will likely honor the majority of my remaining clerkships (FM was my first).

Should I just drop out now and save money? Any thoughts? I'm obviously going through the appeals process now but I want to be prepared.

Thank you.

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[Redpancreas]

First off, if you want to troll me, go ahead. I'm not looking to argue who is right or wrong, I'm just looking to genuinely know how this will affect my residency application. For those of you who want to schadenfreude out on my problem, go right ahead.

Long story short, in my Family Medicine clerkship, I was given two unprofessional marks for "failing to be a team player" and "being uncivil" from a resident who essentially just does not like me. Coupled with a third unprofessional mark for turning in a late preceptor evaluation, I have one mark too many.

The way my school works is, if you get more than 2 marks, you get a CP grade for conditional pass, which means you have to repeat 4 weeks of the 8 week clerkship, which if you complete your grade is changed to "CP/P" and you pass.

Also, on my dean's letter there will be a paragraph from the family medicine director saying "The student received two unprofessional marks for failing to be a team player and being uncivil. He was receptive to feedback and changed his behavior, however." or something to that effect.

So my question is, will this affect my chance of landing a residency? I was looking towards General or Vascular Surgery, or possibly EM. My Step 1 was 235 and I will likely honor the majority of my remaining clerkships (FM was my first).

Should I just drop out now and save money? Any thoughts? I'm obviously going through the appeals process now but I want to be prepared.

Thank you.

That's very strong wording! Is that really the exact language your school uses to penalize students for professionalism issues? It will have a significant impact for EM at least and I wouldn't see why it wouldn't on surgery, but I have heard surgery can turn a blind eye to anything but their own grade. I don't know the situation but from your perspective, it sounds like they're overdoing it. Sorry to hear that. All that being said, it won't be an app-killer. To get a better vibe of how this will affect your deans letter, ask your Clerkship director how many students received these comments. The first thing I would think someone would do when they read these comments is compare your application with other applicants from your school. Make them give you a number and if it's absurdly low like 1%, ask them if you think you deserve to be singled out in this manner for what you (judging off your post) was you being frustrated.

Is it possible to go to that resident and tell him/her that this is really going to affect your Dean's letter and career aspirations and ask for reconsideration? I wouldn't overdo the apology because this point you're be basically begging for mercy so cut the crap. The resident probably felt disrespected by you and rightfully so and that compounded with stress of residency probably made him act the way he or she did.

Also, why do you think you're going to honor the rest of your Clerkships?

EDIT: Just re-read and realized that the report was already made. If I recall correctly, contacting the evaluator to contest a grade will lead to immediate failure of a course at least at my school so don't do that. I would just talk to the Clerkship director and see if it can be removed and if afterwards, under their approval if you can do something to remediate your actions (idk, work a weekend, write an essay, etc.)

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Lastly, unsolicited advice. There's a lot of ways to state this but I use the emotional battery analogy. Everyone has an emotional battery. It's what makes someone give you a compliment one day but hate your guts another day. M3 and residency is a time where batteries are running low quite often. Do everything to keep yours charged and not zap from other's. This is just how we as humans inevitably are.

 

[Dares Dareson]

Yeah, the manual states we are not to contact preceptors who mark us down and I definitely have not. I asked the director for a meeting with the resident, I'm not sure if it will happen. The worst part of this is, the resident herself never told me there was any problem. I had no idea until I received her negative evaluation 2 weeks after the clerkship ended and about 6 weeks since my last contact with her. I thought we got along really well.

A synopsis of what will go on my letter is: "Dares has appropriate knowledge for MS3, he sees patients/presents cases well, he is responsive to feedback and has grown as a student. However, there were three unprofessional marks: he was not civil to faculty/staff, he was not a team player, and he did not finish an evaluation on time. However, he accepted responsibility for these and changed his behavior accordingly."

The instances were not actually discussed with me ever until I received my final grade, but whatever. It is what it is.

I think I will honor the rest of my clerkships because at my school honor is based entirely on our shelf scores + not screwing anything up in terms of professionalism. I never had any unprofessional marks before this instance, not even being a minute late, and I tend to do well on tests. I also anticipate the statements from the other clerkship directors will be favorable because this sort of thing has never happened to me before. I just think there was one person I didn't get along with.

 

[GrandBuckeyeOH91]

First off, if you want to troll me, go ahead. I'm not looking to argue who is right or wrong, I'm just looking to genuinely know how this will affect my residency application. For those of you who want to schadenfreude out on my problem, go right ahead.

Long story short, in my Family Medicine clerkship, I was given two unprofessional marks for "failing to be a team player" and "being uncivil" from a resident who essentially just does not like me. Coupled with a third unprofessional mark for turning in a late preceptor evaluation, I have one mark too many.

The way my school works is, if you get more than 2 marks, you get a CP grade for conditional pass, which means you have to repeat 4 weeks of the 8 week clerkship, which if you complete your grade is changed to "CP/P" and you pass.

Also, on my dean's letter there will be a paragraph from the family medicine director saying "The student received two unprofessional marks for failing to be a team player and being uncivil. He was receptive to feedback and changed his behavior, however." or something to that effect.

So my question is, will this affect my chance of landing a residency? I was looking towards General or Vascular Surgery, or possibly EM. My Step 1 was 235 and I will likely honor the majority of my remaining clerkships (FM was my first).

Should I just drop out now and save money? Any thoughts? I'm obviously going through the appeals process now but I want to be prepared.

Thank you.

What exactly did you do to make them say you were uncivil?

 

[GrandBuckeyeOH91]

Yeah, the manual states we are not to contact preceptors who mark us down and I definitely have not. I asked the director for a meeting with the resident, I'm not sure if it will happen. The worst part of this is, the resident herself never told me there was any problem. I had no idea until I received her negative evaluation 2 weeks after the clerkship ended and about 6 weeks since my last contact with her. I thought we got along really well.

A synopsis of what will go on my letter is: "Dares has appropriate knowledge for MS3, he sees patients/presents cases well, he is responsive to feedback and has grown as a student. However, there were three unprofessional marks: he was not civil to faculty/staff, he was not a team player, and he did not finish an evaluation on time. However, he accepted responsibility for these and changed his behavior accordingly."

The instances were not actually discussed with me ever until I received my final grade, but whatever. It is what it is.

I think I will honor the rest of my clerkships because at my school honor is based entirely on our shelf scores + not screwing anything up in terms of professionalism. I never had any unprofessional marks before this instance, not even being a minute late, and I tend to do well on tests. I also anticipate the statements from the other clerkship directors will be favorable because this sort of thing has never happened to me before. I just think there was one person I didn't get along with.

Did you end up passing in the end?

 

[Doc_Ock]

Can you challenge this? If the person simply doesn't like you this is an abuse of power issue.

 

[justabanana]

You need to address the unfairness of being able to get two marks from one person who's not even an attending if that's really what happened. Could that resident have given you three marks all herself? Just seems to me like you should have to piss off 3 separate people for 3 separate professionalism strikes...

I do wonder what you did though.

 

[terrence_110]

Yeah, the manual states we are not to contact preceptors who mark us down and I definitely have not. I asked the director for a meeting with the resident, I'm not sure if it will happen. The worst part of this is, the resident herself never told me there was any problem. I had no idea until I received her negative evaluation 2 weeks after the clerkship ended and about 6 weeks since my last contact with her. I thought we got along really well.

A synopsis of what will go on my letter is: "Dares has appropriate knowledge for MS3, he sees patients/presents cases well, he is responsive to feedback and has grown as a student. However, there were three unprofessional marks: he was not civil to faculty/staff, he was not a team player, and he did not finish an evaluation on time. However, he accepted responsibility for these and changed his behavior accordingly."

The instances were not actually discussed with me ever until I received my final grade, but whatever. It is what it is.

I think I will honor the rest of my clerkships because at my school honor is based entirely on our shelf scores + not screwing anything up in terms of professionalism. I never had any unprofessional marks before this instance, not even being a minute late, and I tend to do well on tests. I also anticipate the statements from the other clerkship directors will be favorable because this sort of thing has never happened to me before. I just think there was one person I didn't get along with.

The fact that these "unprofessionalism" issues were not discussed with you directly, and you only were made aware of them when you received your course evaluation. That is a pretty bad move on the institution's part.

If you were legitimately "uncivil to faculty/staff," it would be obvious to you when that occurred or someone would have mentioned it to you. Do you have any knowledge on when the "uncivil" behavior could have happened? Any specifics? If you don't remember any part, then clearly they (attending, residents) were not doing their responsibilities as teachers. Do you think you may have just had a bad resident?

 

[GrandBuckeyeOH91]

Lol he stopped responding

 

[ParallelLines]

Lol he stopped responding

He dead