You guys tell me. Prior to the Board contacting me I did not even know that they even existed frankly. I don't know anyone there. I have never worked with any one on/from the board. There is no lawsuit.
I am not the one who believes in conspiracy theories, but I wonder if this is happening to me because I am an IMG, POC and Muslim. I cannot come up with any other reason!
There is a huge difference to the board between retroactively revoking and letting it expire - future board inquiries. If they just let your limited license expire, then when anyone asks in the future it looks fine -- you had a limited license, and it ended for any number of good reasons. If they revoke it, then that creates a paper trail that there was a problem. I don't think you need to invoke some sort of racial animus here.
I do want to back up and comment upon some of your prior posts.
I had two episodes, two months apart. The first time, my attending chose not to escalate the matter and asked me to get more sleep. Both of us assumed it was because of chronic sleep deprivation. The second episode happened during an away rotation and resulted in my dismissal. During the investigation following the second episode, I was asked to complete a sleep test and even though the home sleep study that I had done was abnormal (albeit without an explicit sleep disorder) no one at my program or PHS investigated it further. My sleep disorders were finally diagnosed after I underwent a PSG with MSLT months after my dismissal on the advice of a lawyer.
The Board's sole allegation against me is that by not seeking help after the first episode, I have undermined the public trust in the profession of medicine. This is ridiculous because no one seeks medical help for a sleep disorder after a single episode of falling asleep especially when there are coexisting confounding factors such as chronic partial sleep deprivation and shift work etc.
You suggest in this post (and others) that you fell asleep at work due to sleep deprivation and shift work. If I was the PD of your program, I'd look at this problem through the lens of all of the other residents -- how many residents in the last 5 years have fallen asleep during a shift (ignoring when you're in a call room, of course). Is this something that happens all the time, or never?
because to me, if you fell asleep while monitoring someone's anesthesia -- that's a "never" event. It can never happen. It would be like my kid's school bus driver falling asleep while driving the bus -- even if they just fall asleep at a red light while the bus is stationary. In that case, I would fully expect the bus driver to immediately be evaluated for the problem.
So absolutely, if any of my residents fell asleep while providing clinical care, we would absolutely take that very seriously. Fall asleep in conference -- not that big of a deal. So context is important. What were you doing when you fell asleep?
If you were having trouble staying awake, you should have notified someone that you were unable to work. That's what the board is concerned about -- that either you can't tell when you're "sleep impaired", or that you just don't care. Either way, they see you as a danger.
You also seem to suggest that your program should have figured out you had a sleep disorder. This is your responsibility, not theirs. Sounds like they did some screening tests to figure out if you were medically disabled. Beyond that, its your responsibility to address your health problems, not your program.
