This has been an interesting thread to review, but some things jumped out at me while checking it out. I hate to be direct, OP but some of these quotes you posted ring some alarms.
Could someone fill me in on the schedule I should expect each year of med school assuming no accomodation? This would be helpful:
1) How many classes each semester, each year? In how many of those classes can I expect grading to be based on exams?
2) Are there finals + midterms or just finals?
3) What hours should I expect to be in class and what would my daily schedule look like?
4) What would my daily schedule look like during year 3 and 4? How many hours at each activity and total per week?
Here is the question of medical school and how flexible it is. As
@Raryn,
@Goro, and others have said, Medical school is not as straight-forward as Undergrad/Law/Business school. These questions show a complete lack of understanding of the structure of preclinical and clinical training which you must have if you are going to jump in. Medical school is often described as "drinking from a firehose" with the incredible amount of information thrown at you, and there is no way around being responsible for ALL of it. I am concerned that you are heading towards medical school without abandon but I'm not sure you understand how Medical School is organized.
2) Schools do not have to be "interested" in accommodating. They have to follow the law. They cannot ask for need for accommodation during interview and you are not required to disclose it and they cannot retaliate (hard or soft retaliation) for your not telling them upfront. If that were the case, nobody with health problems would be graduating anywhere. Furthermore, they have a built in incentive to make it work b/c you're paying them and not the other way around.
I am sure Goro and others can elaborate because I'm a little rusty on the data, but it is generally accepted that it costs schools
far more to train you in medicine than your tuition so the logic here is a little flawed.
I know people who have received accommodations in medical school such as extra time, note takers, 20% extra time on USMLE etc.
While such things I am sure are available, I also know notations appear on your transcript about it. No, your personal health information is not released, but when we get residency applicants every so often their USMLE score comes with a bit of an asterisk saying that accommodations were provided to the student. People can interpret this as they want, and for some programs this may be a red flag if it's paired with other information in the MSPE (e.g. a potential 6-year medical school track). For reasons
@aProgDirector stated above, this may very well turn people off to your application and there isn't really anything you can do to "prove" bias there.
You may be surprised if you found out how many of your class mates are getting some sort of accommodation from your school's disability office in a confidential manner.
I think you'd be surprised how many qualify for disability assistance and don't go for it. Out in the world of having an actual job outside of school (which you have been in almost continuously it seems, unfortunately), particularly in medicine, work ethic and production is supremely important. I had very severe ADHD (diagnosed as a child) which caused severe study and test anxiety, but I had to overcome that and deal with it because no one is really going to care when the crap hits the fan as a physician. If you can't be counted on to act in an emergency (and yes, there are emergencies in Psychiatry - see active suicidal ideation, acute mania on an inpatient ward) or worse, refuse to place yourself in such a situation (you'd have to be exposed to these things during residency at the VERY least) then you are doing your colleagues and, more importantly, your patients a disservice.
It looks like 10-15% of advertised residencies (at least in PEDS) are part time, so that's a good sign.
I've never personally heard of a "part time" residency. Occasionally life events happen - people get sick, severe illness in the family - which forces people to take leaves of absence, but part time during residency doesn't work for the reasons everyone else has brought up. For pregnancy in almost all programs, you are essentially forced to take all of your vacation (3 weeks) plus sick leave (1 week) and any additional time (2-4 weeks) will be taken as unpaid leave and added on to your residency at the end. Some of my colleagues have worked out a "research" block during a potential unpaid interval but, at least in Anesthesiology, our certifying board allows a maximum of 3 months of research in a standard 4 year track. Almost everyone that has a child or has a severe life event in residency that I know has ended up owing some time at the end. [EDIT: might be 6 months in 4 years, but the point is the time spent in research cannot be unlimited]
Also, resentment keeps coming up. I don't think anyone here is being resentful but some have mentioned that people may resent me for being part time. That unfortunate, but it's not a consideration, because resentment from some quarters will always exist towards someone requesting an accommodation. I've had people be resentful towards me at my current job and in law school.
To me, this is perhaps the most alarming. It's a lack of professionalism and courtesy to your colleagues. You really don't seem to mind that your colleagues, particularly in residency, will have to work more in terms of call and days worked because of your condition. That won't generate just resentment, it could result in open revolt.
Then there is the patient care aspect. If you work half a day on an inpatient ward (including psychiatry ward), you'd have to regularly hand off care of your patients to another provider. Increasing hand offs and turnovers in patient care are one of the biggest dangers facing clinical medicine right now. It's been shown in the surgery, anesthesiology and critical care literature that more hand offs is associated with worse clinical outcomes. I'd expect the same to be true in the emergency room and on inpatient wards, but I do not typically rotate there. The same is true in nursing, which is why there is a trend to 12 hour instead of 8 hour shifts, particularly on inpatient/critical care units.
I really don't mean to be blunt or offensive to you, OP so please do not take this as a direct attack. But I really am troubled by your lack of full understanding of the gravity of what you are suggesting for your future. I would strongly advise you to sit with an academic advisor, likely from a local medical school, and lay out your situation and get his or her input. Most of what I and others have said is anecdotal, but
@Goro and
@aProgDirector have more practical experience which continues to be largely brushed aside. Finally, someone brought up Technical Standards which each school has - I am not sure fairly certain the solutions you have proposed would not fulfill them for my medical school (a large public university). Your solutions for residency likely wouldn't be acceptable at my institution either (a large, public research-based hospital). Best of luck, do some serious soul searching about this.
Last bit of advice - our PAs and NPs routinely work no more than 40 hours a week and several work on a PRN ("as needed") or part-time basis. I honestly think this is a better solution for you, but the schooling may very well be equally resistant to augmentation.