02-04-2024, 02:33 PM
(02-03-2024, 07:17 PM)six_and_done Wrote: What I did:
PGY1-4: I offered to resign PGY2 year, citing that I wasn't a good fit for the program. Unfortunately - I was met with an unexpected response by the chairman that made it difficult to resign. I was placed on remediation which I completed without issue. I suspect I lost trust and was resentful to some extent and this likely contributed to an unprofessional interaction with the chairman during a PGY4 six month review.
PGY5-6
PGY5 year was half research half clinical as punishment for my PGY4 incident if I recall correctly, accepted into spine fellowship July 2024
PGY6 year I was shocked to receive 6 month probation since PGY5 had excellent reviews. Nothing pointed to the additional items in the probation including my training being extended by 6 months (I had to cancel my Spine fellowship), being denied the position of chief resident.
I'm proud to say that I approached it with earnest respect, accountability. Only reason is because I think at the time I did love neurosurgery for sure.
In my opinion, documentation heavily points to completion of probation.
I was surprised to have my of probation extended and I responded by requesting it to be appealed, but the appeal was not available.
Partly because all the stress (I felt as if I was being forced to quit) etc, an intra-op argument with a co-resident was enough for the recommendation of termination.
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What they said I did:
I was unprofessional in the setting of probation and therefore failed to meet the terms of my probation.
My takeaway: I learned that in this situation, the details were not important because of the power/authority that a neurosurgery department has. I also believe that the interaction during my PGY4 year required a strong response (termination, LOA, offer to resign) - but officially, it resulted in a letter in my file and punitive modification to my PGY5 year. The threshold for tolerance of ANY type of problem for the remainder of my residency was very low. Maybe I didn't fully appreciate this and that was my mistake.
This was the perfect question to ask - thank you.
I'm happy to hear that things worked out more favorably in your case and thank you for the kind and encouraging message.
You make very important points:
On paper, is easy to demonstrate the infrastructure required to train a resident is present in any given department. In reality, I can say first hand it is not completely representative.
Departments and faculty can display some degree of impunity that may be detrimental to education of residents. Changing this would benefit from neurosurgery residents developing a reasonable argument to implement creative ways to address this.
I saw the "buddy-buddy" system you described - I wasn't able to fully integrate in this way, I think probably because of my personality - I wasn't an extrovert ever in my life and found it overwhelming to mix personal and professional life. However - I suspected this kind of system could lead to problems and saw some very detrimental effects in professional development and credibility in some people.
Why specifically did you offer to resign in your PGY2 year? Was there a significant incident that occured that prompted you to want to leave so abruptly?