When a resident leaves under such circumstances, there are two sides to the story. It isn't fair to that resident or the institution if we get into the details. I know for a fact the institution does not want to revisit this. If the resident does, they are welcome to.
Others may have different grievances (they obviously do for whatever reason), and I don't know about the supposedly racist Twitter post as I never saw it (although I have my suspicions if it was truly racist as such libery is taken with that word these days) that is referenced, but the singular issue, and it's a big one, I have with your program is what you all did to that resident. Everything else that was posted, I don't really care about. Fine, you have great training and objectively some really great junior faculty. But that doesn't change the facts of what happened in the past. Without being able to talk about the situation, which you are undoubetdly are not permitted to do, it is easy to hide behind the excuse that what's done is done and we don't have a time machine and we don't really want to talk about it. It's also easy to say that we don't know all the facts. That's true, we weren't physically in those meetings. But the evidence that this was a rotten decision is fairly overwhelming.
The fact of the matter is that advancing a resident to a PGY-5 position then ----canning that person, who objectively went on to become a board certified competent gainfully employed radiation oncologist, suggests that this person should have been allowed to graduate or further remedies offered. If this person couldn't find another residency, failed boards, had medical licenses revoked, etc, then the "
two sides" argument might hold more water.
I have no doubt that there was a reason the decision was made to not graduate that individual. The only real legitimate reason to try and ruin someone's professional career like this would be either gross incompetence or irredeemable professionalism issues. Both of these situations would likely have reared their heads before the last year of training. And further, the fact that this person was deemed acceptable enough by another residency, graduated, became board certified, and achieved admirable employment all provide further evidence that this person probably did not have major professionalism or competency issues serious enough to warrant dismissal from the program.
You have to admit that this is a very bad look, and I think you all have a major challenge in overcoming the collateral consequences created by this decision, especially in a very uncompetitive residency market. As a MS4, a program with such a reputation would terrify me, and regardless of reputation for clinical training, I would put the program at the bottom of my rank list. As a junior resident, I would want to know that my program has my back and will do everything they can to help me try and succeed and not have to worry about losing my career over a hiccup or personal vendetta. I would want to know that they would view a failure to graduate me as a failure on their part to train me and believe that there was no way that this could happen.
Maybe the decision to not graduate the resident was completely justified and you all would do it again. I doubt it, but it's possible. More likely it was a mistake, and you all have the task of somehow convincing everyone that things like that won't happen again. Which is of course difficult if you can't talk about it openly.
Also, your call for censorship of this discussion because you don't like what's being discussed is fairly disappointing. If you don't like the story about the resident being fired, then you are free to jump in and defend why it was justified, on an anonymous account even. Censorship is never ok. Attacking the nature of anonymous discussion is essentially also an attempt to try and censor. It's an ad hominem. We're anonymous, so the discussion should be ignored.
