Dental Students Face Challenges
No sugar coating it: dental students face significant challenges. No professional program is easy, but dental education and training are especially arduous. A study published in the National Library of Medicine found that from one-half to three-quarters of dental students struggle with completing long exams, grasping lecture content, maintaining grades, and managing patient care. The American Dental Education Association lists perseverance as the top dental school demand, saying graduating from dental school isn't a matter of how smart you are but how hard you are willing to work. The Association acknowledges that dental students can feel overwhelmed and discouraged by program demands and negative feedback. Dental school is no cakewalk. And misconduct charges can make the challenges of dental school even more overwhelming. Get the help you need. Retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento if you face dental school disciplinary charges for falsifying clinical hours or other misconduct.
Falsifying Dental Clinical Hours
The pressures of dental school can tempt students to falsify clinical hours. Dental programs know the pressures and the temptations. A New York Post article documents one such alleged scam in which dental students regularly swapped clinical hours for specific procedures among one another to ensure that all students could complete the hours for all required procedures. The students weren't doing the work but were getting academic credit. And they alleged that their instructors knew about their cheating practice and largely tolerated it until administrators intervened. The pressure to falsify clinical hours can be especially intense when clinical patients are not available for required procedures. The National Library of Medicine study mentioned above found the unavailability of clinical patients to be among dental students' chief worries. If you don't have the patients available to complete your clinical work and hours, the temptation is to exaggerate or misrepresent those hours or even outright make them up. If your dental program has charged you with falsifying clinical hours, you are not alone when facing those allegations. National school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento is available to help you defend and defeat those charges.
Dental School Clinical Hours Requirements
Dental school requires a lot of clinical hours. The specific number of hours varies from school to school, but one website summarizing clinical hours requirements states that the average requirement is around two thousand hours. Two thousand hours amounts to a solid year of forty-hour weeks doing nothing but clinical work, although according to the American Dental Education Association, the programs instead generally spread the clinical hours' requirements across the third and fourth program years. Those hours don't include the shadowing hours many dental schools, like the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, require for admission. And those hours aren't random duties. Dental students must instead generally complete and document over thirty different dental procedures to sit for board exams. The need to both spend a lot of hours and fit specific procedures into those hours multiplies the temptation to exaggerate and misrepresent register logs and other documentation of clinical hours. Dental schools are rigorous with their clinical hours' requirements because their Commission on Dental Education accreditation standards requires clinical training. That requirement means that accreditors may audit your dental school's documentation of individual students' clinical hours.
Detecting Falsified Clinical Hours
Dental schools accept the responsibility to put in place reasonable measures to detect falsified clinical hours. Clinical hours registry logs may include a statement that the entry of hours in the log certifies that the student actually performed those hours, subject to sanction for misrepresentation. Clinical course syllabi and instructors will remind students of that obligation to accurately report clinical work and hours. But dental schools often take a further step toward detecting falsified hours by expressly requiring not just instructors and clinical staff but also other students to report suspected misconduct. For example, the University of Washington School of Dentistry's Code of Professional Conduct states without reservation, "Faculty, students, and staff of the School of Dentistry have the responsibility to report violations of the Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct." Failure to report can lead to its own misconduct charge. Dental students may also resent when other students cheat on clinical hours, giving them another reason to report suspected misconduct.
Dental School Rules Prohibiting Falsified Hours
Dental schools maintain student codes of conduct, professionalism policies, and student handbooks that prohibit falsifying clinical hours and authorize the school to pursue disciplinary sanctions against violators. The University of North Carolina's Adams School of Dentistry, for instance, maintains a Code of Professional Conduct that requires integrity and honesty in all practices. Likewise, the University of California San Francisco similarly maintains a Student Conduct, Professionalism, and Dispute Resolution Policy, and the University of Illinois School of Dentistry maintains a Code of Professionalism, both requiring honesty in reporting data, which would include clinical hours. These codes and policies all authorize misconduct proceedings against dental students who violate their provisions. Violating your school's student code of conduct or professionalism policy may be no small matter. You can face severe sanctions up to suspension and expulsion for misconduct violations. Falsifying clinical hours can be an especially serious violation insofar as it may leave the student unqualified to safely perform the missed procedures. Don't ignore or minimize falsified hours charges. Instead, retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento to help you defend and defeat disciplinary charges alleging falsification of clinical hours.
Disciplinary Procedures for Falsified Clinical Hours
Dental schools routinely publish protective procedures for determining misconduct charges, including charges for falsifying clinical hours. You should have fair notice and reasonable opportunity to contest charges that you falsified clinical hours. Each school's procedures may vary, but procedures commonly require written notice, investigation including the accused student's interview, and some form of hearing before an independent fact finder or panel. For example, the University of Washington School of Dentistry's Code of Professional Conduct makes each of these assurances. At the University of Washington School of Dentistry, a Professional Ethics Committee hears misconduct charges. The procedures require that the school notify the accused student in writing of the details of the charges, together with the time and place for the Committee's hearing. The student may bring witnesses and a retained attorney to assist the student at the hearing. The Professional Ethics Committee must decide the charges in writing shared promptly with the accused student. If you face misconduct charges over falsified clinical hours in your dental program, retain premier school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento to help you strategically deploy your school's disciplinary procedures for the best possible outcome. Procedures can make an enormous difference when properly invoked.
Consequences for Falsified Dental Clinical Hours
Misconduct findings, especially for falsifying dental clinical work or hours, can lead to serious consequences right up to school dismissal. Students who falsify clinical hours can lose their dental education. The University of Washington School of Dentistry's Code of Professional Conduct, for example, authorizes reprimand, disciplinary probation, suspension, expulsion, and restitution as available sanctions within the Professional Ethics Committee's discretion. Similarly, the University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry's Academic Handbook also authorizes reprimand, probation, or school dismissal but adds other sanctions like failure of a school year, course failure, additional education and training, grade reduction, transcript notation, and conditions on continued program participation. While misconduct findings can bring severe direct sanctions, misconduct can also have serious collateral consequences. Those consequences can include lost references and recommendations from professors, lost employment opportunities, and, if the sanction is suspension or dismissal, lost university housing, medical care, and transportation. Misconduct findings can also impair your relationship with mentors, friends, and even family members. With such severe direct and collateral impacts, you have every reason to treat misconduct charges most seriously and to retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento to help you defeat those charges.
Dental School Falsified Hours Appeals
Dental school disciplinary officials sometimes make unfairly harsh, unsupported, biased, or otherwise erroneous misconduct decisions. To ensure appropriate review of misconduct decisions and sanctions, many dental schools offer the accused student the opportunity to appeal the decision to an independent appeal official or panel. For example, the University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry's Academic Handbook assures that a student who has suffered discipline may appeal that sanction to the school's Appeals Review Committee. The dean who imposed the sanction appoints the three-member Appeals Review Committee from among faculty members who did not participate in the initial sanction decision. An appeal under UD Mercy School of Dentistry procedures offers more than the written appeal presentations many other schools provide. The Appeals Review Committee, in this case, holds a hearing at which the student may attend with new witnesses and evidence. Appeals generally require that the student demonstrate some error in the original decision. That demonstration can require the special expertise of an attorney advisor skilled and experienced in academic administrative matters. When you retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento, he and his student defense team can obtain the hearing record, review the record for error, summarize the record, and make the written appeal argument in a compelling manner. Let attorney advisor Lento pursue your appeal.
Dental School Alternative Special Relief
The above hearing and appeal procedures may not be your only avenues for relief. Indeed, you may have already exhausted your dental program's published hearing and appeal procedures on your own without adequate relief, leaving you with a disciplinary record and sanction. Don't give up if that's your case. Instead, retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento to explore alternative special relief through your dental program's oversight channels. Dental schools and their universities maintain general counsel, outside retained counsel, ombuds offices, risk managers, and similar oversight functions and officials. These oversight channels can ensure that the dental school doesn't face litigation, liability, and regulatory sanction for violating student rights. Attorney advisor Lento has the national network and reputation for invoking these oversight channels for opportunities to negotiate special compromise relief. Your situation may have compelling circumstances warranting that oversight relief. Let attorney advisor Lento help you explore all options. Attorney advisor Lento has helped many students gain reinstatement or other relief through oversight officials. Clear your record of discipline, and preserve your dental education.
Defending Falsified Dental Clinical Hours Charges
Skilled and experienced attorney advisor defense representation can perform many tasks and functions to improve the outcome of your dental school misconduct charges. Your retained attorney advisor can help you evaluate the charges, identify exonerating and mitigating evidence, and organize and present that evidence to investigators and other disciplinary and oversight officials. Your retained attorney advisor can help you manage the communications necessary to answer the charges, invoke protective procedures, and negotiate an early informal resolution. Your retained attorney advisor can also help you prepare for and attend informal and formal hearings to present evidence, cross-examine adverse witnesses, and make defense arguments. Documenting your favorable outcome and ensuring that your dental program clears your record of any charges is another important role for your retained attorney advisor. Skilled and experienced attorney advisor representation is the single most effective move you can make to achieve your best possible outcome to falsified hours charges.
Premier Attorney Advisor Available to Defend Charges
Defending a dental school's charge of falsified clinical hours takes special advocacy skills. Local criminal defense attorneys generally do not have the experience and skills to properly handle academic administrative proceedings involving misconduct charges. Dental school procedures differ markedly from criminal court procedures. You should instead retain national school discipline defense attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento for the special knowledge, skills, and experience you need for a favorable outcome to your academic administrative matter. What works in criminal and civil court generally does not work in academic administrative cases. Attorney advisor Lento has helped hundreds of students nationwide to defend and defeat misconduct charges in academic administrative proceedings. Trust attorney Lento to handle your dental school misconduct charges. Call 888.535.3686 or go online now to retain attorney advisor Lento.
