No Two Hospitals Are Alike
The teaching hospital at which you pursue your medical residency can make a huge difference to your residency experience and outcome. Top teaching hospitals are extraordinary professional environments where earnest residents can see their knowledge, skills, and confidence grow by leaps and bounds. Yet not every teaching hospital is alike. Indeed, each hospital has its own unique administration, clinical supervisors, support staff, patient population, equipment, physical plant, and workplace culture, expectations, and requirements. Medical residents generally enter their residency with the best of intentions. Having passed clinical courses and step exams to complete their medical education, medical residents also generally enter residency with the required medical knowledge and basic skills. Yet the unique nature of each teaching hospital inevitably presents some medical residents with challenges so serious as to put their residency at risk. Don't let the unique challenges of your teaching hospital delay or derail your medical practice and career plans. If you face professionalism, progression, or other issues threatening your dismissal or nonrenewal as a medical resident at your teaching hospital, retain premier medical resident advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm medical resident defense team to represent you. Your medical education and career deserve the best available defense.
Failing to Complete a Medical Residency
No matter how smart, skilled, and prepared you are when entering your medical residency, a residency's significant internal challenges, together with external factors beyond your control, can threaten your ability to complete the residency. An AMA survey finds that residents face special challenges with work-life balance, time pressures, fear of failure or making a serious mistake, developing required clinical skills, educational debt, and just dealing with the residency's stress. When these and other challenges cause a residency to go awry, teaching hospitals can, with medical school support, suspend or terminate a medical resident's employment. Teaching hospitals may also decline to renew a medical resident for a second year because of issues that arose in the resident's first year. Suspension or termination from a medical residency, or nonrenewal of the residency before the resident completes the full program, generally means that the resident cannot qualify for medical licensure without finding and completing another residency. Yet failing to complete one residency can make finding, entering, and completing another residency very difficult, depending on the cause of the failure. In short, residency suspension, dismissal, or nonrenewal can place the resident's medical license and career at risk. You didn't match and then worked incredibly hard at your residency only to see your career slipping away because of some unexpected issue or challenge. Preeminent medical resident advisor Joseph D. Lento is available to help you keep your medical residency on track to preserve and pursue a rewarding medical career.
Common Residency Issues at Top Teaching Hospitals
While each medical resident's experience is unique, residents at top teaching hospitals tend to face several common issues. Any one or more of these issues can lead to a resident's discipline up to and including suspension, termination, or nonrenewal. If you face any of these issues at your teaching hospital, threatening your medical license and career, retain premier medical resident advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's medical resident defense team for your winning representation. Preserve your medical career.
Medical Resident Professionalism Issues
Professionalism is generally the medical resident's greatest challenge. Professionalism issues can include allegations of substandard patient care, patient abuse or neglect, recordkeeping issues, insubordination or other inappropriate conduct toward supervisors and peers, and other issues reflecting the resident's inability or unwillingness to conform to standards.
Medical Resident Progression Issues
Medical residents can also face performance and progression issues. An AMA report recognizes that residents face significant time and efficiency challenges. A resident may be up to the work but just not able to complete it as quickly as the program requires. Add to the clinical caseload the various in-training hours that a residency may require, and the medical resident can fall behind, failing to complete program units timely or at the level of success the program's standards require. Appeals for relief from progression requirements, or grade appeals, may be necessary.
Medical Resident Personal Issues
Personal issues like illness, accidents, pregnancy, and separation or divorce can be the cause of professionalism, progression, and other medical resident issues. Personal issues may require leaves of absence or even withdrawal from the residency program. Don't, though, assume that you may take as many leaves as you need or wish or that your withdrawal won't affect your ability to resume and complete a residency. On the contrary, residency programs, even those at top teaching hospitals, can look with suspicion on leave or withdrawal requests. Hospitals need staff, including residents. The absence, leave, or withdrawal of one resident affects other residents and staff, not to mention patients and hospital operations.
Medical Resident Misconduct Issues
Medical residents are generally highly responsible individuals. Misconduct is not ordinarily a medical resident's issue. But the stress of residency can lead an otherwise sound resident to behave in ways that the teaching hospital and supporting medical school may perceive to be residency misconduct. Medical residents can face hospital or medical school misconduct charges over alleged sexual harassment, misuse of computers or other hospital equipment, abuse of hospital drugs or theft or misuse of other hospital supplies, and a wide range of other alleged misbehaviors. Even a criminal charge not directly related to the residency, like one for assault or drunk driving, or a civil lawsuit alleging domestic violence or other character issues, can threaten the residency.
Get the Help You Need at Your Teaching Hospital
You may love your residency match, or you may be just doing the best you can to endure until you complete your residency. No matter how you feel about your residency, don't let its challenges delay, disrupt, or derail your medical education, career, and practice. Retain premier medical resident advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's medical resident defense team for winning representation in communicating and negotiating with your teaching hospital.
