Graduating from medical school and beginning your medical career as a medical resident in Vermont is one of the most exciting times of your life. This is the part of your education where you get to work with real-life patients, getting actual, real-world experience in real-time settings. Technically you're still in training, but everything you do from this point on counts. You will be held accountable for everything that you do in your residency since you are working in the real world. As a doctor, you have a responsibility to take care of your patients and work well with your colleagues. With these increased responsibilities comes an increased chance of making mistakes.
Anyone can make a mistake, but as a doctor, your mistakes can actually cost someone their life. For this reason, you are held to a higher standard than people in other professions. Regardless of whether you're working around the clock, eating very little, or not getting enough sleep, you're always expected to be your best. Unfortunately, the things that make medical residency challenging are also the things that could get you into a situation where you could lose your residency.
Dismissal From Vermont Residency Programs
Any professional or personal mistake that you make as a medical resident could affect and threaten your medical career. Whether you're a first-year resident or you're finishing up your final year, all eyes will be on you. As your tenure grows, the medical situations you'll be responsible for will become tougher and more complex. You could make mistakes professionally, personally, ethically, and in many other ways.
Ethical, Personal, or Professional Behavior
In other careers, you make mistakes and people generally forgive you. As a doctor, you're not given that leeway. You're in a position where people trust you enough to put their lives in your hands.
The American Medical Association (AMA) has created a national codification of medical ethics. This was created to help improve and ensure the quality of public health care.
Some of the violations that you could get into trouble for include the following:
- Allegations of sexual misconduct have been made against you
- You've accepted bribes
- You've shown a consistent inability to handle your stress, a situation that has led to things like grievances with team members and medical errors
- You've been shown to have discriminated against other people based on their sexual orientation, nationality, race, or religious beliefs
- You've engaged in public intoxication or some sort of substance abuse while working
- You've made patient care decisions in spite of the fact that there was a conflict of interest between you and a patient
- You've been accused of physical assault or DUI charges
- You've stolen pharmaceuticals from the hospital
Competency Issues
You can be the smartest resident in the world, but you also have to prove that you're competent. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires that residents have competency in six areas in order to successfully practice medicine:
- Medical knowledge: Medical residents must prove that their knowledge of biomedical and clinical health goes far beyond the theoretical. They have to be able to prove they can use it in the real world.
- Patient care: Medical residents are responsible for providing excellent and compassionate care to their patients, and they must provide care that is relevant and appropriate to their patients' issues.
- Practice-based learning and improvement: Your medical knowledge should not stop with school. You should be on a constant mission to improve yourself and your skills so that you can handle the rigors and expectations of your medical career.
- Interpersonal communication skills: A doctor's bedside manner means everything. Their ability to communicate effectively and compassionately with their patients should be top of mind. In addition, medical residents must engage with their colleagues and the staff of the hospital in a way that delivers the best outcome for all the patients.
- Professionalism: No matter the circumstance, medical residents - and all doctors - must maintain a level of professionalism and responsibility. This is to help ensure adherence to ethical principles and to ensure that they are sensitive to the needs of their patients and colleagues.
- Systems-based practice: As a medical resident in Vermont, you must show awareness of the healthcare systems used in the state as well as those used across the United States.
Sanctions and the Disciplinary Board
All teaching hospitals have disciplinary boards. One of their primary goals is to enforce hospital and program policy compliance. If a medical resident gets into a situation where they violate a policy, they could face disciplinary action from the board. That disciplinary action could be something relatively mild like a verbal reprimand, or it could be something extremely serious like full dismissal from the program.
As a doctor in Vermont, you are responsible for disclosing any disciplinary action that was ever taken against you while you were a resident. If there is a serious violation on your record, that may make it difficult for you to hold onto your medical license. When going before a disciplinary board, many medical residents believe that they can handle it on their own, but they'd be mistaken. Many of them say all to defend themselves properly, and they lose everything.
Hiring an Attorney-Advisor
Whether you're at the beginning of your program or you're just about to finish, your goal is to get through your residency with honor, dedication, and competence. You want to avoid having any transgressions on your record. If you're called before the disciplinary board at your learning hospital, you could end up losing everything. You need someone by your side who can help walk you through the process.
Attorney-advisor Joseph D. Lento and his team at the Lento Law Firm have years of experience defending students who have gone through exactly what you're going through now. They have relationships with the attorneys on teaching hospitals' general counsel teams, making it possible for them to propose alternative options when it comes to coming up with alternatives to dismissal. The ultimate goal is to avoid litigation. With Joseph Lento and his team by your side, you have an increased chance of coming up with a solution that benefits everyone.
Don't let mistakes ruin the medical residency you've worked so hard for. Call the Lento law firm today at 888-535-3686 or send a message via the online portal for more information.
