WuLabsWuTecH
Forum Deputy Chief
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Recently graduated resident here!
Reading all of the replies here, what I gather happened is this, please correct me if I am wrong:
1. You had an EMT license
2. You started working at a hospital as an ER Tech. A requirement for employment is holding a valid EMT certificate. However, you were working in a job description that required you to do things not just in your scope, i.e., you weren't on a rig, therefore the EMT certificate was not what you were practicing under.
3. You had to renew your EMT license as a condition of your employment. You signed the paperwork saying that you wanted to renew and met all of the requirements to renew, CEs included.
4. You got audited.
5. You failed to respond to the audit.
It's concerning that you still haven't given us all the facts around the audit and continue to try to obfuscate what exactly happened. Did you not have the CEs and falsified the renewal application? Or did you simply not respond because the hospital was having issues with you and you had lost your job an no longer needed the cert? Either way, it's bad, but one's now as bad as the other. If you can explain away that you just lost track of paperwork and didn't need the cert, but now learned your lesson on making sure you respond to licensing boards in a timely manner, then you might be able to sweep it away pretty easily. If you still have your CE certificates, than you might even be able to get the revocation to go away with (relative) ease. However, if you falsified information on a renewal application, that's gonna be a lot tougher of a hurdle to climb over.
Your next steps:
1. Hire an employment lawyer. Talk to them to see if they can get this taken off of your record. Ideally you have CE certificates saying that you actually did complete your CEs and you just didn't submit them. Have your attorney submit the documentation. Expect that they will call up each and every training center to verify your certificates. In their mind, you fooled them once, they don't want to take any more chances. If you still have all the documentation, it shouldn't take more than $1-2k for your lawyer to write a few letters and maybe a few follow ups along with your face time for consultation/strategy. If you actually did falsify documents, maybe your lawyer can find some technicality or compromise or threaten a lawsuit. Maybe he won't. Expect to drop closer to $10k if not more.
2. You never actually specified which year in med school you are. Whether you wait for the outcome of #1 or do this simultaneously depends a lot on how much time you have. Reach out to the PD of the specialty you are interested in at your medical school and ask for guidance. Explain what happened and see what his suggestions are.
Things that will work for you:
1. Wanting to go into a less competitive specialty (I know people with DUIs that under the right circumstances could land a community peds/FM/IM program in less desirable areas)
2. More time that has passed since the transgression
3. No other blemishes on your records (if you have good Step score, good research, an MSPE that shows you don't have professionalism issues, clinical grades and reports that show no other ethical quandaries, then they might be willing to overlook one issue a long time ago...)
Things that will work against you:
1. Wanting a highly competitive specialty or competitive program. They are getting thousands of applications per spot, so yours might never even make it past the computer filter regardless of what else you have going for you.
2. Any other red flags on your application, especially professionalism or ethics related
3. Being at a lower tier medical school or DO school. It's not fair, but your chances are harder as it is, and they might give someone from HMS a chance with a red flag but not someone from Giant State Tech University.
One fact check, coming right up! Most states require at least an intern year in residency if not more. California requires 3 PGY years I think. He could get a one year temporary intern year (simplifying for non physician people: these are not full residencies, less desirable, and do not lead to board certification. They are designed for people who are going into a tough specialty that need a transitional year to learn some more medicine. Most people who do these fall in to 2 categories. The first is someone going to a prestigious residency that wants all of their residents to complete a "transition year" or "preliminary year" because they want their residents to be able to hit the ground running. The other group is people who didn't do well enough in medical school to get into a residency the first time and need more time to hone their skills and then try again as a more competitive candidate) in a state that allows full licensure after PGY-1. You job options will be limited (most hospital require BC/BE so hard to get credentialed or find work) mostly to outpatient such as wound care, running your own urgent care, having your own practice with no hospital affiliation (common in rural areas still). Honestly, this is not really a desirable pathway.
Many medical schools are morally bankrupt. They are willing to look past major transgressions if the student can still pay knowing full well the student will never "Match" (get a job as a resident which is a prerequisite to becoming an attending physician). We have well over 1000 and close to 1200 med students graduating per year that can't Match and about 50% (give or take) of those will never become licensed, practicing physicians. It's really a sad state of affairs that they are taking kids' money (let's face it, they are still young and don't know the realities of practicing medicine yet so even though they may be 22 or 23, they are still effectively kids) knowing the chance of them matching is minimal. Maybe they were willing to overlook OP's issue because he was a Nobel Laureate and this guy's actually at Harvard Med worrying about nothing. But 9 time out of 10, the school just didn't want to pull the admission late in the game after the background check is completed, school starts in 2 weeks, and be left with an empty seat.
100% this. It is concerning that even on an anonymous forum, you still tried to hide the facts of the case from us. As a matter of fact, though we suspect you falsified your application, you still have not come out and said it (if you did and I missed it, I'm sorry, but I see no evidence of you owning up to it anywhere else in this thread). That's the more problematic issue for me. If I were a PD, there's going to be other things on your application that might hint at you not being ethical. It might come out in your interview. Residency is very competitive to get into, but there at 80 hours per week, it's a grueling experience. The bottom line is that a PD does not want to have to worry about if his residents are going to get into hot water again, and if they do, how they will find coverage for your 80 hours/week while your training license is being investigated. Pregnancies you can plan for, illnesses are usually short and you can have contingency plans. A guy going out for 4-6 months on investigation that was preventable--that can cripple a program. You want that PD to read your application and not worry about you being a potential liability.
Reading all of the replies here, what I gather happened is this, please correct me if I am wrong:
1. You had an EMT license
2. You started working at a hospital as an ER Tech. A requirement for employment is holding a valid EMT certificate. However, you were working in a job description that required you to do things not just in your scope, i.e., you weren't on a rig, therefore the EMT certificate was not what you were practicing under.
3. You had to renew your EMT license as a condition of your employment. You signed the paperwork saying that you wanted to renew and met all of the requirements to renew, CEs included.
4. You got audited.
5. You failed to respond to the audit.
It's concerning that you still haven't given us all the facts around the audit and continue to try to obfuscate what exactly happened. Did you not have the CEs and falsified the renewal application? Or did you simply not respond because the hospital was having issues with you and you had lost your job an no longer needed the cert? Either way, it's bad, but one's now as bad as the other. If you can explain away that you just lost track of paperwork and didn't need the cert, but now learned your lesson on making sure you respond to licensing boards in a timely manner, then you might be able to sweep it away pretty easily. If you still have your CE certificates, than you might even be able to get the revocation to go away with (relative) ease. However, if you falsified information on a renewal application, that's gonna be a lot tougher of a hurdle to climb over.
Your next steps:
1. Hire an employment lawyer. Talk to them to see if they can get this taken off of your record. Ideally you have CE certificates saying that you actually did complete your CEs and you just didn't submit them. Have your attorney submit the documentation. Expect that they will call up each and every training center to verify your certificates. In their mind, you fooled them once, they don't want to take any more chances. If you still have all the documentation, it shouldn't take more than $1-2k for your lawyer to write a few letters and maybe a few follow ups along with your face time for consultation/strategy. If you actually did falsify documents, maybe your lawyer can find some technicality or compromise or threaten a lawsuit. Maybe he won't. Expect to drop closer to $10k if not more.
2. You never actually specified which year in med school you are. Whether you wait for the outcome of #1 or do this simultaneously depends a lot on how much time you have. Reach out to the PD of the specialty you are interested in at your medical school and ask for guidance. Explain what happened and see what his suggestions are.
Things that will work for you:
1. Wanting to go into a less competitive specialty (I know people with DUIs that under the right circumstances could land a community peds/FM/IM program in less desirable areas)
2. More time that has passed since the transgression
3. No other blemishes on your records (if you have good Step score, good research, an MSPE that shows you don't have professionalism issues, clinical grades and reports that show no other ethical quandaries, then they might be willing to overlook one issue a long time ago...)
Things that will work against you:
1. Wanting a highly competitive specialty or competitive program. They are getting thousands of applications per spot, so yours might never even make it past the computer filter regardless of what else you have going for you.
2. Any other red flags on your application, especially professionalism or ethics related
3. Being at a lower tier medical school or DO school. It's not fair, but your chances are harder as it is, and they might give someone from HMS a chance with a red flag but not someone from Giant State Tech University.
One fact check, coming right up! Most states require at least an intern year in residency if not more. California requires 3 PGY years I think. He could get a one year temporary intern year (simplifying for non physician people: these are not full residencies, less desirable, and do not lead to board certification. They are designed for people who are going into a tough specialty that need a transitional year to learn some more medicine. Most people who do these fall in to 2 categories. The first is someone going to a prestigious residency that wants all of their residents to complete a "transition year" or "preliminary year" because they want their residents to be able to hit the ground running. The other group is people who didn't do well enough in medical school to get into a residency the first time and need more time to hone their skills and then try again as a more competitive candidate) in a state that allows full licensure after PGY-1. You job options will be limited (most hospital require BC/BE so hard to get credentialed or find work) mostly to outpatient such as wound care, running your own urgent care, having your own practice with no hospital affiliation (common in rural areas still). Honestly, this is not really a desirable pathway.
Many medical schools are morally bankrupt. They are willing to look past major transgressions if the student can still pay knowing full well the student will never "Match" (get a job as a resident which is a prerequisite to becoming an attending physician). We have well over 1000 and close to 1200 med students graduating per year that can't Match and about 50% (give or take) of those will never become licensed, practicing physicians. It's really a sad state of affairs that they are taking kids' money (let's face it, they are still young and don't know the realities of practicing medicine yet so even though they may be 22 or 23, they are still effectively kids) knowing the chance of them matching is minimal. Maybe they were willing to overlook OP's issue because he was a Nobel Laureate and this guy's actually at Harvard Med worrying about nothing. But 9 time out of 10, the school just didn't want to pull the admission late in the game after the background check is completed, school starts in 2 weeks, and be left with an empty seat.
100% this. It is concerning that even on an anonymous forum, you still tried to hide the facts of the case from us. As a matter of fact, though we suspect you falsified your application, you still have not come out and said it (if you did and I missed it, I'm sorry, but I see no evidence of you owning up to it anywhere else in this thread). That's the more problematic issue for me. If I were a PD, there's going to be other things on your application that might hint at you not being ethical. It might come out in your interview. Residency is very competitive to get into, but there at 80 hours per week, it's a grueling experience. The bottom line is that a PD does not want to have to worry about if his residents are going to get into hot water again, and if they do, how they will find coverage for your 80 hours/week while your training license is being investigated. Pregnancies you can plan for, illnesses are usually short and you can have contingency plans. A guy going out for 4-6 months on investigation that was preventable--that can cripple a program. You want that PD to read your application and not worry about you being a potential liability.
