Residency red flag?

[PodDadBod]

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Hi all,

I rotated at one of the programs in Iowa in the last year (being vague because idk if name dropping is ok) and had a great experience overall with a major caveat. I got along great with one of the residents, the chief was a really weird guy though. PD seemed really nice on the surface but reading between the lines you could tell there was something really off about him. This program is supposed to be one resident per year and I thought it was really weird that there was no second year but nobody said anything so I figured maybe it was a weird situation. Well it turns out there WAS another resident who several outside attendings and nurses asked about where he was and everyone with the residency would get really weird about it. My last week there they finally tell me "oh he left due to a career change." Apparently he was actually terminated and the hospital is in the middle of a lawsuit over it. I really like this program overall but this seems like a massive red flag thing that was hidden from me and I'd like to get some outside perspective. Am I making too big a deal out of that?

 

[Boba Foot]

It's pretty damn hard to get fired in residency when most of your salary is getting paid by the government and you're cheap labor for hospitals and program directors. That's enough of a red flag before you even mention they just hoped you wouldn't notice until the last week, when they're forced into giving a weak excuse for it.

You're usually looking at these programs through rose-colored glasses, so if things seem odd even considering that, then there's probably something really off. The couple of programs I externed at that I had bad feelings about and didn't rank turned out to be completely correct in retrospect.

 

[Adam Smasher]

Meh, nobody goes into podiatry without being, at baseline, a little off. Personality conflicts are the norm, lawsuits are a way of life for us, and in a 1/1/1 program it's particularly hard if everyone can't all get a long.