Resigned... help

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baysiderny

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Most of the threads about programs firing or asking for resignation are residency programs. We are in a unique situation. My husband was asked to resign (or he'll be fired) from his fellowship program. This was a highly competitive fellowship at a crappy program.
A little background, when he started this fellowship he was expected to know everything right from the first day. His knowledge was considered weak etc. he started taking all the warnings seriously and started studying for hours which started reflecting on his exams. He started showing improvements. Everyone but one senior attending saw the improvement and started appreciating.his work. This one particular attending would never be happy and refused to change her opinion about my husband. She started becoming increasingly rude to him too. Ultimately my husband was put on probation. to make things worse, my husband was pt on rotation with her. Obviously she refused to change her opinion about my husband. She did however, said that you have improved a lot and did a good job but I would still like you to quit this job since you dont fit here.
My husband was left with no choice but to resign. I wanted to ask what or next step should be? Should we go to gme? Is there even a point in going to them or is it a waste of time? Should we forget this and move on? How hard is it to get another fellowship now? What steps should we take to get another fellowship? I am so angry at this unfair treatment and would like this program to be reported ...
 
No he didn't get fired. He resigned. He is completing his first year. And you are not being forced to reply, surely you have nothing positive to contribute.
 
baysiderny said:
I wanted to ask what our next step should be? Should we go to gme? Is there even a point in going to them or is it a waste of time? Should we forget this and move on? How hard is it to get another fellowship now? What steps should we take to get another fellowship? I am so angry at this unfair treatment and would like this program to be reported ...
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There is a lot of misuse of pronouns here. "we" and "our" are not accurate.....it's difficult to separate the affect a spouse's work life has on us from the fact that we have no place in our spouses work life. It's also difficult to stay out of it and admit that we might not be getting the entire, unbiased version of events from our spouse. Just tell them you still love them and will support them, and leave the career managing to them
 
My point was that, since it's his job and resignation, it would be better if he were here to discuss the issue. Also, as with all stories like this (and if you do a quick search of this forum you'll find dozens) there are 2 sides to the story and details are always left out that are critical to determining the appropriate approach.

To answer your question, if he was put on probation with a plan for remediation and then given the opportunity to resign instead of being fired, it's likely that the program did things by the book. While he doesn't have much (besides time, anxiety and ego) to lose by going to GME for this, he's not going to get anything out of it. And even if the GME office forced the program to take him back, would he really want to be there? The one thing he should have done before resigning was to extract a positive LOR from the PD. It's probably too late for that now but it's worth a shot.

The good news is that, if this was a fellowship, that means he's already done a primary residency and can just go get a damn job now.
 
his job has affected not only him but my entire family. When I say we/our, I really mean it too.. I am in this with him, in every step.
But ok back to the issue. Yes he has infact done some years of primary care before joining this fellowship. So getting another job is not an issue.
What I am really interested in knowing is, would he be able to get another fellowship? He left on somewhat good terms. Like it didn't workout, okay, I'll resign. Obviously if he didn't they would've fired him. He probably be able to get neutral letter from his PD.
He was probably wasn't working as they wete expecting him to work but the whole point of being on probation is that you prove yourself that you are meant to be in this program. He did very well on his probabtion. All the attendings admitted to that, but he was still asked to leave. He did go to gme but didn't file official complaint with them since he is afraid the program will put red flags in his file. Its a frustrating situation to be in. all I really care about is him getting another fellowship. Is it unheard of that you quit one fellowship program and secure a spot in another?
 
Sorry to hear about your husband's situation. I agree with other posters that he should be posting as there are nuances to the story that are missing.

Regardless, what fellowship is your husband leaving? Does he need to do a fellowship? Why not just find a position that does not require a fellowship? These are the obvious questions that come to my mind.
 
A highly competitive fellowship.
He wants to do the same fellowship probably in another program. Without revealing too much details everyone in his program knows what's been done too him.wasn't right. One person with the highest authority decided to change things by putting pressure on fellows by doing things their way.
Now the question is what should he do to get another fellowship in the same specialty? He has worked for years to do well in this field. Done tons of publication, research etc.
 
He did go to GME and also consulted a lawyer. The thing is, if done right, he can probably even win but it'll leave adverse effect on his resume and career. Obviously the program can write whatever they want in his file. And lets say even if he does get his fellowship back would he want to continue at this program.
He didn't file an official complaint with GME yet but just told the roughly what happened. We are avoiding going to a lawyer since he can move on to something bigger/better.
How will he go about doing so, is something that needs to be planned. Apply for fellowship again this year?? Do programs have empty spots when fellowship starts in July? If yes, how can we know about such programs?
 
sb247 said:
There is a lot of misuse of pronouns here. "we" and "our" are not accurate.....it's difficult to separate the affect a spouse's work life has on us from the fact that we have no place in our spouses work life. It's also difficult to stay out of it and admit that we might not be getting the entire, unbiased version of events from our spouse. Just tell them you still love them and will support them, and leave the career managing to them
Click to expand...

I'm not sure you're the one to be correcting the OP's grammar.
 
I am posting from my phone. Can only fix autocorrect so much... Sigh
And IM
 
If he is in a very competitive fellowship and wants to restart in the same specialty, resignation is a huge waving red flag with fireworks going off overhead.
You can't spin it that he was a poor fit because he was second guessing the specialty choice. His LOR from the current program to another field could be spun as positive. That's impossible for the same specialty. Maybe he could blame the location and specific deficits in the program.
We let one guy go after his CA2 year of anesthesia residency. He probably thought he was a hard worker and that a couple of the faculty had it out for him as well as he was an easy going person and generally friendly. The reality was that he was an order of magnitude below expectations across the board and so bad during an emergency (which happens in the OR fairly regularly) that he was deemed by 100% of the faculty to be untrainable. He had a plan of action and was improving, but not on a trajectory to be able to graduate. He went on to voluntarily resign and went into PM&R. I don't think ANY of the faculty would have written him a LOR for another anesthesia residency.
Your husband needs to find out what his perceived and actual deficiencies are with a couple no BS, no holds barred frank discussions with a couple trusted faculty. Only then can he figure out if he needs to change his career plans.
100% of the fellowship directors will contact his current PD and find out what the real deal is. If the PD believes he is not capable of success in that field, he is almost certainly DOA.
One last option, a hail Mary, would be to find a PD or chairman elsewhere who has a long standing feud with his current PD and would take him on to spite his old nemesis. This has actually worked for faculty positions, though those were high performers.😱
 
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Not succeeding at a "crappy program" isn't helping either.
I don't want to take a fellow at my premiere fellowship that washed out of the shady program down the road.
It sounds like his problems all started by showing up unprepared. I went back to a fellowship after a few years in practice. I had nothing but time as an attending, and I knew that I had forgotten plenty over those years. You bet I spent several months getting back in the groove of reading at night and preparing myself for my new career. I knew where I wanted to be in a few years and I wanted to be the best fellow they've had in a long time. You work hard and make it happen. I never understood people that just coast along.
 
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Thanks for the honest reply. Probably a reply I was looking for. So his chances in this particular specialty is pretty much none.
What's frustrating is that you can't fight the programs for treating you unfairly. Now that my husband has resigned, another fellow who is also my husband's friend revealed that my husband was setup to fail. Its sad how people can ruin other people's career and anything you do say against them can get you in even more trouble. This particular attending withhold a lot of critical information from my husband so he does badly and she can make a case against him.
 
Trust me, it's not just the one guy. He may have lead the charge, but there was a meeting of the faculty, and they voted him off the island. If our fellowship director just started firing random fellows that we thought were trainable, he/she wouldn't be the director for long.
 
How can you convince your PD to say good things or at least neutral things about you when you reapply through ERAS for the same speciality?
 
baysiderny said:
How can you convince your PD to say good things or at least neutral things about you when you reapply through ERAS for the same speciality?
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At this point, you can't really. If he had extracted that letter before resigning, in exchange for agreeing not to fight it, then he would have been able to. At this point, he just has to ask and hope for the best.
 
In my opinion, your husband lost almost all chances when he resigned. It may have been much better from a legal standpoint if he was fired.

Resigning without negotiations is basically admitting that the PD's statements were correct. You can't take a good legal standpoint to my knowledge when your husband signed up to voluntarily walk away.
 
Isn't resigning always better than getting fired?? In the future, every single application he would fill out will ask for this.. were you ever fired!! He is in a very very tough situatuion where his ex-program director suggested that he applies for the same fellowship again since he is very good at that and his CV speaks for it. But his current program director will never say anything good when inquired from other programs.
 
baysiderny said:
Isn't resigning always better than getting fired?? In the future, every single application he would fill out will ask for this.. were you ever fired!! He is in a very very tough situatuion where his ex-program director suggested that he applies for the same fellowship again since he is very good at that and his CV speaks for it. But his current program director will never say anything good when inquired from other programs.
Click to expand...

The reality is that the firing may not have happened at all. Residency contracts are so that there has to be proof of very unprofessional behavior or something else significant. Even then, firing a resident involves multiple appeal processes. Add an attorney to that and being fired is quite hard in residency. Most programs will thus try to push for a resignation or wait to not renew the contract. Unless the OP is leaving out significant details, the PD bluffed and her husband folded his hand.

Residency/fellowship is hugely important for physicians. The one recommendation I have is to involve an attorney before any decisions are made.
 
You are probably right about nit getting fired after all, but not quitting means you are taking chances. Telling your future employers that you got fired definitely has its own consequences.
We consulted a lawyer before he quit who said we can fight our we can just leave without further damage. Fighting would mean to forever have it on your record, the program putting red flags on your file etc. Gme is good for nothing, that's one thing we've realized. Heck they didn't even tried contacting my husband after the complaint.
 
baysiderny said:
You are probably right about nit getting fired after all, but not quitting means you are taking chances. Telling your future employers that you got fired definitely has its own consequences.
We consulted a lawyer before he quit who said we can fight our we can just leave without further damage. Fighting would mean to forever have it on your record, the program putting red flags on your file etc. Gme is good for nothing, that's one thing we've realized. Heck they didn't even tried contacting my husband after the complaint.
Click to expand...

Why didn't he use the attorney to at least negotiate terms? Adding a good rec letter and even helping secure another spot are terms others have been provided when resigning.
 
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