will this look bad if i keep my mouth shut?

[Mathemagician]

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i was supposed to start a 1-month peds clinic rotation today, but this morning i called the preceptor's office and the secretary informed me that the doctor will be on vacation till next thursday. so here's my dilemma, do i....

keep my mouth shut, relax, enjoy the 1.5 weeks of freedom and start next thursday when she gets back from vacation 🙂

OR

call the clerkship coordinator, in which case she would probably assign me to another doctor and have me start tomorrow 🙁


i'm not interested in peds at all and i'm not really trying to get honors, but i'm afraid that if any of the course directors found out they would view me as being deceptive or unethical if i didn't tell them my preceptor was on vacation. i would looooove to take some time off, but obviously not if it would mean a bad eval or comment in my permanent file. what do you guys think? any thoughts? any advice is greatly appreciated!

 

[pincheeric]

If they find out the minimum action they would take would probably be to require you to repeat the clerkship. At the worst they might find reason to bring up to an ethics review board. There is no way that it could be a good idea in this scenario to keep your mouth shut. So you'll get reassigned and have to do some peds clinic, it's not a big deal. Better to work-up some coughs and runny noses than to risk getting into a heap of trouble.

 

[phoenix0610]

OP I know how you feel, and if it were just a day a two, I'd probably say go for it...but it's a whole week. Be reassigned--you'll never forgive yourself if you get caught and have to face adverse consequences.

 

[AmoryBlaine]

Tempting: yes.

Worth it: absolutely not.

This is the sort of thing that could bring a formal disciplinary action down on your head. You do not want one of those under any circumstances.

In my n=1 experience clerkship directors reserve their most vengeful retributions for those they percieve to be uninterested in their specialty. Most of them have zero sense of humor about this stuff.

 

[45408]

Call tomorrow and tell them. You still might get another day or two off, but they could easily make you repeat the rotation for "failing to meet the requirements" by not having enough days in the clinic/hospital. I would hope they wouldn't make you remediate today and tomorrow, especially since it was someone else's fault for not realizing this error.

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

Yeah, too much risk for this one. If it was a few days off you can justify it by saying "Oh, I thought it'd take that long to find me a replacement attending" or "Oh, I thought you were aware that he'd be gone the first days" and get off with no or light punishment.

However, you can get SLAMMED on this one.

 

[JackBauERfan]

i was supposed to start a 1-month peds clinic rotation today, but this morning i called the preceptor's office and the secretary informed me that the doctor will be on vacation till next thursday. so here's my dilemma, do i....

keep my mouth shut, relax, enjoy the 1.5 weeks of freedom and start next thursday when she gets back from vacation 🙂

OR

call the clerkship coordinator, in which case she would probably assign me to another doctor and have me start tomorrow 🙁


i'm not interested in peds at all and i'm not really trying to get honors, but i'm afraid that if any of the course directors found out they would view me as being deceptive or unethical if i didn't tell them my preceptor was on vacation. i would looooove to take some time off, but obviously not if it would mean a bad eval or comment in my permanent file. what do you guys think? any thoughts? any advice is greatly appreciated!

yep what everyone else is saying is true. You have to meet a certain number of days depending on how strict/regulations are set for that particular rotation.

If your preceptor was off for like 2 days, thursday friday and you met up with them already and they told you its ok, come back on Monday, nobody will probably care. But if you haven't even met the preceptor and you randomly come on that next thursday, even the preceptor won't be able to save you and might not even give you an evaluation.

Its better for you to just let the program know that a mistake probably happened and see what they can do, most likely it will take them 1-2 days to find a preceptor ready to take a student anyways, and they can't count it against you, but if you wait, they will definitely say 'why didn't you tell us earlier'

I remember during one of my elective psych rotations i went on a interview for residency, and they were going to make me come in on saturday ER psych or something to make up for that one friday! good thing the preceptor and me got along well and he told them I would write a small paper instead (which I had already been kind of required to do by him earlier haha), so that I dindt have to come in the extra saturday.

So, again, it kind of depends on preceptor if its just a few days, but if its more than that, someone made a mistake and its ur job to point it out...earlier the better.

 

[Mathemagician]

thanks for all the advice.....although it was unbelievably tempting, reading all your replies made me realize it would totally not be worth it if i got busted, so i called the clerkship coordinator this afternoon and told her the situation. she already knew about it and said that my preceptor had arranged for me to work with one of her colleagues until she got back. for some reason their office secretary must not have been aware of this and didn't tell me this morning when i called. so long story short, good looking out sdn! i would've gotten in some deep poo if i just showed up next thursday when another dr. had been expecting me for a week and a half!

 

[soeagerun2or]

In my n=1 experience clerkship directors reserve their most vengeful retributions for those they percieve to be uninterested in their specialty. Most of them have zero sense of humor about this stuff.

Agreed. You piss on someone's life work and they get irrational. Even if their chosen field is worthless in your eyes. Go figure 😕

 

[The Buff]

thanks for all the advice.....although it was unbelievably tempting, reading all your replies made me realize it would totally not be worth it if i got busted, so i called the clerkship coordinator this afternoon and told her the situation. she already knew about it and said that my preceptor had arranged for me to work with one of her colleagues until she got back. for some reason their office secretary must not have been aware of this and didn't tell me this morning when i called. so long story short, good looking out sdn! i would've gotten in some deep poo if i just showed up next thursday when another dr. had been expecting me for a week and a half!

The lesson here: never trust the office secretary.

 

[45408]

thanks for all the advice.....although it was unbelievably tempting, reading all your replies made me realize it would totally not be worth it if i got busted, so i called the clerkship coordinator this afternoon and told her the situation. she already knew about it and said that my preceptor had arranged for me to work with one of her colleagues until she got back. for some reason their office secretary must not have been aware of this and didn't tell me this morning when i called. so long story short, good looking out sdn! i would've gotten in some deep poo if i just showed up next thursday when another dr. had been expecting me for a week and a half!

Good call. At this point, it shouldn't reflect poorly on you at all. I'd be surprised if they were upset with what you did.

 

[Tired]

I have a better idea, assuming you're happy with a "Pass" instead of "Honors".

Get the secretary to call the attending on his cell phone. Remind him you were scheduled to work with him. Ask him what he wants you to do. Make sure you offer to change preceptors. Make it clear that you don't want to fail the rotation by not doing anything the first 1.5 weeks.

There is a chance he will say, "Just relax, come to my clinic when I come back, and don't worry about your eval." Then you're covered.

 

[TOXOSIS]

I had the same "problem" and didn't report ****! I got "caught" the but they asked if I minded ... don't forget you're paying to be there! So the school feels that they messed up for not filling what they're supposed to. I told the coordinator "I'm okay with it" and I sure enjoyed those 9 days off 🙂

 

[JackBauERfan]

thanks for all the advice.....although it was unbelievably tempting, reading all your replies made me realize it would totally not be worth it if i got busted, so i called the clerkship coordinator this afternoon and told her the situation. she already knew about it and said that my preceptor had arranged for me to work with one of her colleagues until she got back. for some reason their office secretary must not have been aware of this and didn't tell me this morning when i called. so long story short, good looking out sdn! i would've gotten in some deep poo if i just showed up next thursday when another dr. had been expecting me for a week and a half!

also, another tip, kind of common sense, but always take the preemptive and tell the truth. If for some reason you missed a day, dont think no one will not notice and you'll get away with it...you will get burned someday and regret it haha.