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- Apr 4, 2007
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This is a follow-up to a post I made here a few months ago.
A few months ago, on my OB rotation, I made the poor choice of not attending a required lecture immediately preceding the shelf exam. The clerkship director found out, and manually changed my grade for the clerkship from honors to high pass. After realizing the error of my ways and profusely apologizing to her, and after some cajoling from other members of the administration, she changed it back to honors (I had perfect evals and honored the shelf). I thought we'd left things on even terms
What I didn't realize at the time, is that when she went to change my grade, she added comments to the "Required summary of performance for use in Dean's letter" section of the eval. Now, on reviewing my dean's letter, I've found that her comments have found their way into the section describing my clinical evaluations. It now reads as follows:
"X was an excellent medical student. He/she was noted to be very intelligent and to have excellent reasoning ability. He/she was very compassionate with patients and had good communication skills. His/her presentation was excellent. He/she was an excellent assistant in surgery and had very good instincts in that regard. He/she will do well in his her chosen field. *--X did very well during his Ob/Gyn rotation and earned
Honors in the course. However, on the last week of the clerkship, he/she decided to not attend mandatory student lectures. In the discussions with him/her about failing attend a mandatory educational activity, he/she demonstrated significant disrespect towards the clerkship director (???). Ultimately, to his/her credit, he/she did apologize and seemed to recognize his/her significant deficit in professionalism, attendance and dependability. As a result of this recognition, his/her final course grade was allowed to
stand--*"
Our student manual states that "professionalism" issues would only by included in the MSPE if there are multiple comments that form a trend. At no other time in my career has anyone had anything but positive things to say about my level of professionalism. In fact, descriptions from other clerkships directly contradict the comment, and are on the whole immensely positive. I honored almost every clerkship in 3rd year.
I just finished talking to my application adviser, who is really worked up over this. She feels that this will effectively kill my application. I've brought the subject up with the person responsible for writing my dean's letter, but she refuses to alter it (Even though it's evident it has already been edited to a degree, as the original comments are far more scathing) Is this the case? From the PD's point of view, would a comment like this land an otherwise strong application in the trash?
I get it, I messed up. I should've gone to lecture, I didn't. I crossed the wrong person (I was at no point disrespectful: she asked why I didn't go and I told her in an objective, measured way). Now it seems like that one person is going to destroy my career and my chances of matching at a halfway decent program.
I'm not a PD, that's the other person who moderates this forum, aPD. However, from my perspective this would be a major red flag. If your application was otherwise strong and you had letters making it clear you were not unprofessional, I think you'd still be asked to interview. However, at the interview, I expect it would come up, especially with the PD where you're interviewing. As always in such situations, a very professional response would be needed that is profusely apologetic and non-accusatory towards the clerkship director.