Suffering dismissal from your Caribbean medical school program can be devastating personally and professionally. Dismissal from your Caribbean medical school may mean that you have just lost your last chance to pursue your dream of a medical degree and practice. Dismissal from your Caribbean medical school can also carry a host of collateral consequences like the loss of room, board, healthcare, and other services, accelerated student loans, and loss of peer, mentor, and even family support. You surely don't want to face Caribbean medical school dismissal. But your school circumstances may make dismissal appear to be your only choice.
If that's what you're thinking, then you need to consider withdrawal as a much better option. Withdrawal from your Caribbean medical school may sound like it's just about as bad as dismissal. But in many cases, it's not. Withdrawal can, in some cases, be a path right back into medical school, often under significantly better circumstances. Withdrawal may enable you to resolve whatever caused you to face dismissal. And withdrawal could then be your ticket for readmission at another medical school. Medical school admissions committees don't look kindly at applicants whom a Caribbean medical school has already dismissed. But an admissions committee can readily see withdrawal as a wise move for a talented applicant who deserves another chance.
If you face Caribbean medical school dismissal, retain the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team and national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento. Let the Lento Law Firm's premier Defense Team help you achieve withdrawal in place of dismissal to preserve your path to a medical degree.
Progression Issues Warranting Withdrawal
Caribbean medical school students face the same challenges that mainland U.S. medical school students face, threatening their dismissal. The first of those challenges is learning enough medical knowledge and skill to meet a medical curriculum's rigorous standards. Everyone knows that medical education is the hardest academic pursuit one can attempt. Strict academic progress requirements ensure that it is so. Caribbean medical school students must generally maintain a minimum cumulative grade point average, pass all required courses, and finish the program within a specific period of time. Caribbean medical studies aren't a vacation. Like medical studies elsewhere, they're a race against the clock in which students must meet extraordinarily precise medical standards. See, for instance, the satisfactory academic progress policy at American University of Anguilla School of Medicine. That policy requires expressly warns of program dismissal if students do not meet minimum grade point average, course passage, and maximum time-frame requirements:
Students must maintain a minimum cumulative grade point average of 2.0 in order to make satisfactory academic progress. Students who receive a grade of “F” in any course will be placed on academic probation. Failure to pass a repeated course with a grade of “C” or better is grounds for dismissal from the medical program. Maximum time frame for completion cannot exceed 150% of the required credits for graduation.
But just because something's interrupted your race against your Caribbean medical school academic standards and time clock doesn't mean you have to suffer unsatisfactory-progress dismissal. Withdrawal before academic dismissal may keep your academic record a more-positive one without that final judgment of dismissal having shown the medical world that you weren't up to the studies. Consider withdrawal as a last resort when you know that you need time to improve and complete your medical studies.
Professionalism Issues Warranting Withdrawal
Caribbean medical schools, like their mainland U.S. counterparts, must maintain and enforce professionalism standards to show that their students are able to conform their conduct to the requirements of the medical profession. Professionalism codes address a variety of things like the diligence with which a student attends to patients, the skill and care the student displays in doing so, how the student interacts with patients, peers, supervisors, and staff, and how stable, safe, and secure the student is in personal conduct around things like substance abuse, interpersonal violence, and criminal conduct. Professionalism codes can also reach and punish academic misconduct like cheating, plagiarism, and research fraud.
The Code of Ethics at St. James School of Medicine is an example. St. James School of Medicine in Anguilla and St. Vincent requires students to demonstrate each of those commitments and several others. It also provides for a disciplinary procedure when students don't meet those professionalism commitments. That procedure, while sometimes beginning with counseling or other intervention, can result in a nonconforming student's dismissal. But when dismissal looms, a student need not succumb. Proactive steps may forestall dismissal in favor of withdrawal. And withdrawal can then keep doors open to returning to medical studies.
Advantages of Withdrawal Over Dismissal
Caribbean medical school withdrawal has clear advantages over Caribbean medical school dismissal. The biggest advantage is that withdrawal can significantly increase your likelihood of returning to medical studies to complete those studies, get your medical degree, and enter medical practice. Whatever portion of your medical curriculum you've completed before dismissal looms is a credit to your capability and character to complete the program. Getting through a first term, first year, and first examination can be a huge endorsement that you belong in the medical field. Getting even farther can prove that you have what a medical career takes. Your voluntary withdrawal from the program after those achievements preserves their endorsement effect. Withdrawal doesn't mean you've failed. Withdrawal means you've taken a necessary break, perhaps necessitated by the sorts of things like your illness or injury or a death in your family, for which licensed physicians sometimes must take breaks.
Dismissal, on the other hand, indicates not only that you failed to meet your Caribbean medical school's standards but also that you didn't recognize your need for a reset. Dismissal means that your Caribbean medical school removed you, not that you stepped back on your own. Dismissal can thus turn all the academic progress you achieved up to that point from a positive to a negative. Dismissal tells the world that you cannot meet the medical profession's benchmarks. That's how committees considering your readmission to a medical program, whether at your old Caribbean medical school, a new Caribbean medical school, or even a mainland U.S. medical school, may regard your dismissal. You won't likely get transfer credits or even much readmission cred from anything you already accomplished. Withdrawal can be a huge advantage over dismissal for these and other reasons.
How Dismissal Discourages Readmission
The way in which your Caribbean medical school dismissal can discourage your readmission is that you must disclose your dismissal on your readmission application. Whether you seek readmission back into your current Caribbean medical school or new admission to another Caribbean medical school or a mainland U.S. medical school, the committee considering your application will look at you as someone whom your current medical school dismissed. The number one thing admissions committees consider is whether the applicant can succeed in the medical program to which the applicant has applied. The number one thing your dismissal indicates to an admissions committee is that you cannot succeed in a medical program or at least that you did not succeed. You may and should have good reasons for your dismissal. But admissions committees make their own judgments about reasons. And depending on the circumstances, the dismissal may be strong evidence that the reasons you assert that you can now complete a medical program aren't good enough reasons.
How Withdrawal Facilitates Readmission
Withdrawal can have the opposite effect on an admissions committee than dismissal. Yes, withdrawal may look like another form of failure, just short of dismissal. But withdrawal doesn't have to look that way, and often it will not. Withdrawal can actually become a positive. Physicians and other professionals hit the proverbial wall at times. Physicians and medical residents sometimes must pause their practice, or at least seriously adjust, because of various personal circumstances. Those circumstances can include temporary mental and physical disabilities, family deaths or illnesses and dependent care, and other health and life interruptions. Physicians sometimes even just need a break from practice to recover balance in their lives. And so do medical students. The key, though, is that the professional recognizes their need to pause and take it upon themselves to do so. Physician employers and patients would far prefer that the physician step out of practice on his or her own than to have so many bad things accumulate that the profession forces the physician to do so. Likewise, medical school disciplinary and admissions committees would far prefer that a student step out of medical school on his or her own for a time than to have the school dismiss the student. Withdrawal demonstrates self-insight and self-regulation, a key to professional practice.
Collateral Advantages to Withdrawal Over Dismissal
Caribbean medical school dismissal has collateral consequences. Medical school dismissal can mean not just loss of academic instruction and opportunities but also loss of school housing, food services, medical services, transportation, and other facilities, services, and accommodations. Dismissal can also trigger repayment of student loans while causing loss of critical loan support and grant income. Dismissal can also affect visa status. And dismissal can affect family, mentor, and community relationships and reputation. Withdrawal may not have the same effects. The school may extend a grace period relating to housing and services on the possibility of your re-enrollment. Loans may go into deferral rather than collection. Family, foundation, or charitable support may remain available to you. And you won't face the same social and relational impacts. Your support network may instead root all the harder for you to resume your medical studies after your withdrawal.
Caribbean Medical School Withdrawal Policies
Caribbean medical schools maintain policies permitting and, in some instances, encouraging withdrawal. Don't assume that your request to withdraw is something unprecedented or even unusual. Your Caribbean medical school, instead, has probably had many students withdraw for a good reason with the school's support through the school's standard administrative procedures. For example, Caribbean Medical University's Curacao campus offers a two-page Withdrawal Request Form inviting, “Please fill out this form to request official withdrawal from Caribbean Medical University or transfer to another medical school.” You must disclose whether you have university housing, medical insurance, and cell phone plan that you and the university must arrange to terminate. And you must check a box indicating which of these reasons caused your withdrawal:
- Medical/Health
- Financial Problems
- Family Issues
- Academic Quality
- Study Environment
- School's Deficiencies
- Rotations Placement
- USMLE Passing Rate
Caribbean Medical University's withdrawal process, stated on its Withdrawal Request Form, notes that its Retention Committee reviews and approves withdrawal and transfer requests. The process requires the withdrawing student to write a one-page account of supporting reasons. The process also invites the student to submit supporting documentation. The Retention Committee must notify the student of a decision within fourteen days. Your withdrawal process is not likely to be arduous. The key, though, is to ensure that school officials support your grounds. Withdrawal is generally discretionary. Your Caribbean medical school may decide to dismiss you instead.
Fighting Dismissal With Withdrawal
Withdrawal isn't a given. You may need to vigorously fight dismissal in order to achieve withdrawal. Retain skilled and experienced education attorney advisor representation to help you with that fight. Medical school officials may feel it is their duty to dismiss a student rather than let the student withdraw. That judgment can depend on the nature of the dismissal grounds, including the seriousness of the student's failure or misconduct. Medical students suffering serious criminal convictions, for instance, may not get a chance to withdraw. The school's disciplinary committee may instead just recommend prompt dismissal.
But many dismissal grounds don't indicate any fatal flaw in a student's capability to complete medical studies to pursue a medical career. By far, the greater number of cases for dismissal involve gray areas where school officials must make those judgments without any degree of certainty. School officials are often compassionate. They won't condemn a student who deserves a second chance. Your retained education attorney can help you show school officials that you deserve withdrawal over dismissal so that you may get that second chance. In short, you will likely need to pursue a strategic approach your retained counsel helps you discern, including invoking school procedures, developing a convincing withdrawal case, and communicating with your academic and other advisors rather than simply completing your school's withdrawal form.
Documenting Withdrawal Grounds
Caribbean medical school officials, like school officials elsewhere, won't generally accept student assurances at face value, when making important enrollment, discipline, and retention decisions. They cannot do so. They generally need to document the student's academic or disciplinary file to satisfy their administrative and accreditation responsibilities. So, when you pursue withdrawal, you will likely need to provide documentation supporting your grounds. See the Caribbean Medical University's Withdrawal Request Form expressly requiring students to explain their withdrawal grounds in writing while inviting documentation. Your retained attorney advisor will know the nature and form of that documentation, which may include:
- your medical records diagnosing illnesses or injuries interrupting your studies;
- records of your diagnosis with an educational disability and its treatment or remediation, together with your remediation plan;
- death certificates and memorial services bulletins confirming the passing of an immediate family member requiring your attention and grieving;
- medical and treatment records of a minor child, elderly parent, disabled sibling, or other dependent in your care; or
- divorce, separation, child custody, or other legal papers showing a legal matter that requires your urgent attention.
Caribbean Medical School Readmission Policies
Caribbean medical schools maintain policies not just for admissions but also for readmission. The Caribbean Medical University School of Medicine's Student Handbook, for instance, includes a section on readmission. That section, like readmission policies at other Caribbean and mainland U.S. medical schools, states that a student who withdraws must “formally apply for readmission to the Admissions Committee….” The Caribbean Medical University's readmission policy further states, like other readmission policies at other medical schools, that “[r]eadmission is not guaranteed” and that a readmitted student must comply with all school rules and academic standards. You can thus see that the grounds you show for withdrawal may be key to your readmission. School officials are likely to look more closely at those withdrawal grounds than any other aspect of your readmission application. After all, your Caribbean medical school already admitted you once. Your readmission's big issue is your grounds for withdrawing. Other medical schools to which you apply for transfer or admission will similarly scrutinize your withdrawal grounds as much as or more than anything else in your application.
The Attorney Advisor's Role in Withdrawal
You might think that you are perfectly able to handle your Caribbean medical school withdrawal on your own without skilled and experienced attorney advisor representation. Think again. You may have to fight significant resistance to your withdrawal. Once school officials discern the need to dismiss a student, changing the course of that decision can be like turning the Titanic. Don't underestimate the skill, time, insight, and resources that turning dismissal into withdrawal can take. Your retained attorney advisor will promptly notify your Caribbean medical school of the attorney advisor's retention. That step alone puts your school's officials on notice that they must prepare for a fight, or more to the point, prepare to show why withdrawal isn't the better option. Your retained attorney advisor may also take these steps using skills developed from years of experience with hundreds of similar cases:
- confirm the nature and sufficiency of your school's grounds for dismissal;
- advise you whether you have procedures remaining through which to challenge dismissal;
- discern and invoke your school's procedures to request withdrawal;
- help you draft your written statement of grounds for withdrawal, meeting the expectations of medical school officials evaluating withdrawal;
- help you obtain reliable documentation of your withdrawal grounds and organize that documentation for a convincing presentation;
- appeal dismissal decisions and denial of your request to withdraw through your school's published appeal procedures; and
- reach, communicate, and negotiate with your school's general counsel or oversight officials, if all else fails, for alternative special relief.
Avoid Relying on Unqualified Advice and Representation
Your temptation when facing dismissal and needing to negotiate withdrawal may be to rely on your Caribbean medical school student representatives or advisors. Student representatives won't have the skill and experience of a retained education law attorney advisor. Student representatives and advisors also have conflicts of interest between their school interests and your withdrawal interests. Their advice may pave the way for their advancement while sacrificing your retention.
Also, avoid the temptation of relying on a local criminal defense attorney or civil litigator to represent you in Caribbean medical school withdrawal negotiations. Academic administrative proceedings differ from court proceedings. School officials have very different authority, rules, customs, and expectations than judges and court administrators. What works in court won't work in academic administrative settings. Instead, retain a skilled and experienced academic administrative defense team to help you discern and implement the most strategic and effective approach for your best possible outcome.
Premier Attorney Advisor Representation Available
The Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team and national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento are available to represent you at your Caribbean medical school to fight dismissal charges in favor of withdrawal. The Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team has helped hundreds of medical and other students preserve their professional and higher education across the mainland U.S. and at Caribbean medical schools. Call 888.535.3686 or go online now for the premier representation you need to negotiate withdrawal in the face of Caribbean medical school dismissal. Keep your doors open to completing your medical education. Your medical education and career are worth getting the best available representation for your best possible outcome.
