Red Flag

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Theppunisher

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Hello all,
1) for any Physicians involved in any way with match I was wondering how much a red flag such as a traffic violation that deals with alcohol will hurt an applicant? This traffic violation is neither a felony or misdemeanor.
2) Although it has occurred in medical school which means it was fairly recent because there are no other incidents like this prior to this one and the student has never had any academic issues will he be able to get an interview and be able to explain to the residencies?
3) is this something to explain on ERAS when asked about? (since it is not a misdemeanor or felony that question will be answered as no)
4) does it matter if the student is AOA with good LORs that talk about the students character...kind of givving the impression that this might have been a mistake that will most likely never occur again

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Hello all,
1) for any Physicians involved in any way with match I was wondering how much a red flag such as a traffic violation that deals with alcohol will hurt an applicant? This traffic violation is neither a felony or misdemeanor.
2) Although it has occurred in medical school which means it was fairly recent because there are no other incidents like this prior to this one and the student has never had any academic issues will he be able to get an interview and be able to explain to the residencies?
3) is this something to explain on ERAS when asked about? (since it is not a misdemeanor or felony that question will be answered as no)
4) does it matter if the student is AOA with good LORs that talk about the students character...kind of givving the impression that this might have been a mistake that will most likely never occur again
Now, I certainly don't have access to ERAS 2018, but from what I recall in previous years, there are two questions that you might need to report this on.

The first asks about being convicted of a crime. If your violation was neither a misdemeanor nor a felony, this one is simple. You answer "no", quite truthfully, and move on.

The second question is a bit more nebulous. It asks whether there is anything in your history that may limit your ability to be licensed...

Here we get into a conundrum. Given that your violation was not a crime, you might very well be justified in answering "no" here and moving on. But, there do exist medical licensing boards (ex: CA) that want to know about even traffic violations, and if it's obvious from the name of the violation that it involved alcohol, they may want to press further there. Without a pattern of behavior, it's very unlikely they'd ever deny you a license for something like this... but it's something that might be brought up by the board. So if you were exceedingly conservative, you might answer this question yes. If so, you leave a short explanation stating that there was a violation, list the title and date, that you don't personally feel it will limit your ability to be licensed but you want to be honest up front about it, and don't give any more detail than you have to.

That said, I honestly think that I might just leave it off the application completely. With the major exception that if it was reported to your school and *they're* going to bring it up on the dean's letter? No way in hell should you leave it off.
 
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Agree either Raryn. As a side note, DWI in most states is a misdemeanor (Texas its Class B, Florida 1st degree) so if that is the violation be SURE to double check you are correct in your assumption.
 
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thank you.
the offense was actually driving while impaired not a dui which is classified here as a violation
 
thank you.
the offense was actually driving while impaired not a dui which is classified here as a violation

Then sounds like you are a very lucky guy. Don't drink and drive, ever. In the age of Uber there really isn't much of an excuse.
 
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Then sounds like you are a very lucky guy. Don't drink and drive, ever. In the age of Uber there really isn't much of an excuse.


you are correct about that. no excuse is valid for what I did but I did learn from it and it is something that I will never forget
 
Leave it off the application and thank your lucky stars you don't live in a state where anything even close to a DUI/DWI is a misdemeanor at the very least (and usually one that comes with multiple thousands of dollars of fines).
 
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Leave it off the application and thank your lucky stars you don't live in a state where anything even close to a DUI/DWI is a misdemeanor at the very least (and usually one that comes with multiple thousands of dollars of fines).

Thank you for the response...
I am not sure if I should leave it off even though it is not a felony or misdemeanor because it may show up when a background check is conducted and may bring up an issue later especially because it will make me look like a person who isn't honest

With that being said on the eras app there is a question about there being anything that may stop me from getting a license... is this violation not reportable in that section or because it is not considered a misdemeanor or felony not relevant (which I assume it should because it is alcohol related)
 
I had an underage drinking charge on my record. I never reported anything on any ERAS app or anything else, but when it came to my state license (in the state where the charge occurred), I ended up looking into it more. I tried with every effort to find the record (it was before they routinely kept electronic records [yikes, I'm getting old]). Someone told me if it still existed, it was some paper in a box in a dusty corner of the courthouse.

Regardless, it came with a 3 month loss of driver's license, so I wanted to be sure it didn't come back to haunt me.

I spoke with one of the medical license reviewers of the state. She basically told me point blank 'Look, if you write a short paragraph about what happened, I'm going to read that and give you your license. If you don't report it, but a flag comes up somewhere, that opens a whole Pandora's box.'

It definitely didn't seem to affect even the time it took to get my state license.

Granted, my infraction was in the distant past, but I think if there is any question on the app you come across where your answer could go either way, you may fall on the side of being as transparent about it as possible.
 
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I had an underage drinking charge on my record. I never reported anything on any ERAS app or anything else, but when it came to my state license (in the state where the charge occurred), I ended up looking into it more. I tried with every effort to find the record (it was before they routinely kept electronic records [yikes, I'm getting old]). Someone told me if it still existed, it was some paper in a box in a dusty corner of the courthouse.

Regardless, it came with a 3 month loss of driver's license, so I wanted to be sure it didn't come back to haunt me.

I spoke with one of the medical license reviewers of the state. She basically told me point blank 'Look, if you write a short paragraph about what happened, I'm going to read that and give you your license. If you don't report it, but a flag comes up somewhere, that opens a whole Pandora's box.'

It definitely didn't seem to affect even the time it took to get my state license.

Granted, my infraction was in the distant past, but I think if there is any question on the app you come across where your answer could go either way, you may fall on the side of being as transparent about it as possible.


Thank you.
But i believe now most if not all residencies do background checks before you start and if I do not add this to the application and it comes up I an not sure how they would take it... or is it possible not to state it on ERAS but report at sometime after I match before the background check?
 
There's no right answer to your dilemma. You can report it, and then you don't need to worry about it showing up later when you apply for a license. Will some programs decline to interview you because of it? Perhaps.

Or you can not list it, and hope that when you apply for licensing, it doesn't come up as a problem. You'll need to complete paperwork for your license that will be sent to your PD, so they will see your answers to questions on the application. If they don't match what they were expecting, they can claim that your application was incomplete / fraudulent, and could try to waive your match over it. Or, they might not care at all.

So, you can put it in your app and worry about it now, when you're applying
or
You can leave it out of your app, and worry about it later when you're licensing.
 
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