This is brief expose of the practices occurring at the University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICOM). The proximally germane links to this Expose can be found in the links at the bottom of this web page. Even though the documents are not new; they are not obsolete-you Pre Meds out there take a long time focusing on that "coordinate" word in "UICOM 3" which this school will vehemently defend. And it is the PreMeds who need to pay careful attention because they sure as hell would not want you to see it. There is some leverage out here in the real world but when in this place, if they see fit to throw this baseless rubric at you because they fully intend to fail you; your options are very limited and they know it.
One of the problems occurring, which seriously compromises the academic quality and nature of the College is that medical students are not allowed to sign or review the clinical evaluations of the preceptors. Hence, it is possible to falsify and alter evaluations, which does occur. From my own experience, I received a falsified evaluation from the Family Practice Clerkship and an altered evaluation from Internal Medicine. The Internal Medicine evaluation was altered when I filed a grievance. Furthermore, there is neither legitimacy nor comparative measure to the way in which medical students are evaluated for the clinicals, which in my case explains the egregious dichotomy between the first 2 years of medical sciences and clinical clerkships. A dichotomy they very much want to believe exists and is due to a lack of correlation ("connecting the dots" for those more juvenilely inclined or "painting a picture" for the more artistically inclined-anyway it is cut these are ambiguous unverifiable constructs any potential student to this school should be wary of), an argument which cannot substantiated independently. The lack of correlation argument, as it is practiced in this school, is a convenient unverifiable default argument used to disjoint the two components of the curriculum-it is a cop out argument for those "slamming" their students.
The culture of this place is such that the clinicals are a "grade" on the medical student's personality rather than medical acumen. What these people want to believe is a consensus is nothing more than an unverifiable default. These consensuses of theirs are not fact based consensus but rather political rubber stamps. They are in agreement, yes to "UICOM 3". Even if 1000 folks say what you see in "UICOM 3" incidentally all from UICOM, ask yourself is it believable or some baseless theoretical construct being applied to you after being slammed? A thousand people can tell me the moon is made out of blue cheese, all the more suspect if it is coming out of one place, that is not a fact based consensus which an intelligent person would take faith in and neither is "UICOM 3". It is an unrealistic mode of evaluation created by a political prism specific to this school. In the legitimate academic world students usually start failing for a clear reason such as death in the family, divorce or other mishaps. The only thing which can explain "UICOM 3" is to be found in their vivid imaginations and not in the real world.
The personality factors for which the medical students are being graded on don't port to the very areas where medical care is actually needed. However, the personality factors if they can even be considered such since this is a program filled with FMG (Foreign Medical Graduates) residents will be ported to any positive or negative clinical assessments of the medical students. Hence the independent unverfiability of much of what these people have to say and the lack of correlation with the rest of ones academic record or what even transpired in this place. Upon seeing how stereotypical and uniform the failure pattern is amongst medical students who are failed will one see how unrealistic and unprofessional the evaluatory process is. Essentially, one could transpose names of the medical students on the evaluations and not know the difference; such is their consensus. Hence, the consensus is not that the medical student failed but rather if failed she will be evaluated in a very stereotypical manner. The slang for such grading is "slamming" which is in reference to the days when physicians did house calls. Another way of viewing this is that the medical student is not failed but rather slammed as is evident when examining the clinical evaluations. And after being slammed a lack of correlation will be asserted. And as usual none their arguments can be independently substantiated or verified. The practice that occurs after failing a clerkship is to repeat the clerkship at another teaching hospital. This has its limitations since the failed clerkship is noted on the transcript, if it can even be considered such, and the residents themselves rotate amongst the affiliated hospitals.
Another problem is that the grievances in proceeding and outcome are a sham. One medical student taped a conversation with an instructor. Unknown to him the instructor submitted two falsified letters to the Disciplinary Committee. Ironically, on the tape the instructor discusses what she has seen to be grounds for disciplinary action/expulsion and am sure will be reaffirmed if examining the archives, grounds they cannot credibly use as a justification for their actions. I do believe what she mentioned will be verifed by an investigation of their disciplinary archives since she did not realize she was taped and as police interrogators know, the initial statements made when not under duress are most accurate. The tape, which still exists, was used to exonerate the medical student. However, shortly afterwards rather than reprimanding the preceptor, she was given tenure. Even with the tape showing numerous material fabrications, the grievance generated this ruling which I consider to be standard and am sure would be further reaffirmed by investigating their grievance archives. The link below to the glossary of links shows how the dean seems to view this which I consider to be an accurate generalization to what occurs in the grievance process.
This seems like a technicality which one with sense would not take comfort in. What is a grievable decision by an agent of UIC is not defined; however, there is no doubt she generated these memos on university letterhead and submitted them to a committee of the College. Knowing this place, I have reason to believe anything other than what the grievant files is grievable. It does not matter what you say, show or do; the grievances are pointless. . . Even though the links appear to have gender bias, what is incriminating about UICOM is quite gender neutral. The link to the clip of her conversation can be found in the glossaary of links. The conversations were relatively innocuous, it was the letters generated to the Disciplinary Committee based on such which were horribly caricatured. These people are so confused a medical student was expelled for complaining about a falsified evaluation and about the evaluations in general. They felt the medical student was harassing the instructor; and the expulsion was an infringement of the student`s inalienable right to free speech. The residents were slandering the medical student in question, according to one of the residents who informed him of such. Upon complaining about it to the administration, charges were trumped up such as the complaint over the falsified evaluation to expel the medical student considering it would be impossible to pass any clerkships with these residents. And yes the expulsion was noted on the transcript-just as nasty as it is ill. My theory regarding the expulsion is when receiving evaluations like "UICOM 3" and it becomes obvious you are not going to make it in the place; they will try to find some way to neutralize you. And what better way than to take disciplinary action or if that is completely infeasible try to implicate mental stability or health. The falsified evaluation is an interesting evaluation in that it unlike the others is not signed by anyone-I reiterate none of them were signed by me-and the preceptor who supposedly wrote it was not an evaluating preceptor. Clearly, the abuse of their autonomy has engendered a confusion that would disgust decent people.
For another clerkship a medical student taped a conference incidentally. In the conference the resident asserted a patient did not respond to steroid therapy. However, the pulmonologist asserted the patient was never on steroid therapy-(The voices on this sound clip contained in the glossary of links are that of Naseem, Lopata and Onal-the names provided for verification purposes. The resident obviously denies the accusation in the conference as to be expected with over 50 people there. However, he was the liaison to the consulting service. If the misinformation is not coming from him then maybe either Lopata or Onal would like to elaborate where they got it from. In good conscience I could not recommend this place to anyone even the patients. This happened to be caught because the case was so high profile and atypical.) Even though the diagnosis had not been finalized the differential was such that patient management was not affected. The man was essentially being sentenced to death if the pulmonologists had not interceded. However, the medical student who managed the patients care and who taped the conference was failed. And when grievance was filed no action was taken. The tape still exists. Incidentally, the resident in question transferred the oversight of care of the patient to another resident in my opinion out sheer spitefulness in that the patient considered me to be his physician-such is with my people skills. The patients did consider me to their physician even though being a 3rd year Med student. Something this particular resident who happened to be a Pakistani national could not tolerate. It is not the nationality of the resident as it is the culture of this school leading to the unprofessional behavior on the part of the residents.
For my ICM (Introduction to Clinical Medicine) experience, I noticed egregious improprieties in the evaluations of the standardized clinical encounters. For the grievance, I reviewed the taping of the encounters and found 3 of the 4 professional patients had lied. Once more the grievance procedures were of no avail. Even with the VHS tape of the encounter to show the evaluations were incredulous, the grievance was pointless. The internal evalaution which is in the glossary of links and not one sent to me by default. I had made multiple requests in order to receive the evaluations from the standardized encounters for my grievance. It was only when the Associate Dean requested they be sent to her Office, I received them. The numbered points correspond to contradictions seen in the video. Yes, the numbered points correspond to contradictions seen in the video. What's on the other side does not highlight a point other than being extra bytes to upload. The Grievance essentially produced a letter mentioning acknowledgment of issue "however". And you will not like the "howevers" coming out of this place, not a shred of evidence to back it up.
For those of you out there who pride yourselves in being sensible let me ask you a question regarding bedside manner-who is the judge of it? You would hope the patient has something to do with this. In regards to my case, UICOM cannot produce a single patient who will vouch for what they are saying. And in regards to the standardized encounters, they cannot produce the video tapes since that too refutes their assertions. As an example I remember one standardized encounter where the evaluation is saying he just did not do point etc. etc., and guess what is on the video? Yes, point etc. etc. properly done-this is why the videos of these encounters can't be produced. It is very political what gets said about you and the patients and reality dont have much to do with it. I would not be surprised if this school was ambivalent about the new NBME proposal to have a standardized clinical component to the licensing exams which incidentally would not have weeded mua out but I do wonder about some of those residents. If there is a contradiction it could be used as ammunition against UICOM. Quite frankly, I would trust the NBME more than anything coming from this school.
Another issue is the nature of the training, which is haphazard and inappropriately political. Many of the residents come from countries where there are check-off practicuums for procedures. This means they must perform the procedure under supervision, not a resident but a procedure preceptor, to be checked off before doing it independently. What happens at the U of I College of Medicine is that the residents, not being of the fabric or caliber as the preceptors who trained them back in their native lands, rarely care to teach and yet they hold the medical students accountable for knowing the procedures under the philosophy: see one, do one, teach one. And if she does not know, she is failed. Many times she is failed regardless, which was my experience in this place and the reason they cannot produce evidence in sum or of substance for the clinicals outside of their own evaluations none being signed and not in correspondence/correlation with anything namely the care provided to the patients and their relative outcomes.* For these evaluations to be in correspondence with what actually transpired and the rest of my academic record-I should be getting proficients to outstandings not a bunch of zeros. This is reality. . .
It is of relevance to note that the hospital records being the legal documents in the context of malpractice litigation would be used to exonerate this school in the event any of my patients sued, under the deviation from the standard of care legal benchmark, which is highly unlikely-considering they did relatively well under my care and liked me-while the clinical evaluations all being unsigned would be used to assert I failed. This is an utterly ridiculous disparity which is unlikely to occur anywhere else in academia. You Pre-Meds out there need to ponder "UICOM 3" very carefully because it is their evidence-not patients, not hospital records and not anything outside the confines of their own institution. Furthermore, without your signature, they can produce as much of this "evidence" even post de facto if desired. Cloaking "UICOM 3", which they will try to do, with rhetoric does not make it more credible and needs to be viewed raw and seen for what it is by the PreMeds. Mendelsohn in "Male Practice" also mentions that a great deal of professional misconduct gets cloaked in rhetoric. It is something how his experience from more than 20 years back is so germane. A standard cloak might be the University Of Illinois College Of Medicine has a substantial amount of evidence to give credence to their position regarding this Expose without ever realizing they are referring to things like "UICOM 3". In regards to standards, the only real standard observed in this place is to blame the student in whatever form that might take. It might be because of the residents, the attendings are not much better even though they would like to believe they are, that there is an 8-12 week lag before medical students finally receive these clinical evaluations which are not signed or reviewed by them as the forms allow for. I personally had my primary learning of the Internal Medicine procedures from a Hispanic medical student who was 1 year senior to me. This is not a drawback per se since the Internal Medicine procedures are simple procedures and he had already completed his surgical clerkship. However, this should not be a corequisite to someone`s training.
I will just call the conversation in the glossary, "You have been advised." It is a phone conversation a student taped after "failing" a clerkship, this is not the same instructor mentioned above but rather a phone conversation with a clerkship director who was out of the loop but very familiar with what happens in cases such as these. Pay attention to the doctor`s words, it is his words that count and don't ever forget that. The important point to this which was edited for making a point, much of the conversation was talking about procedures, is the students can be transposed and for that matter so can the directors. The director`s name is Grumet if someone wants to match voices for verification purposes also to emphasize this is a real conversation. What he is mentioning is a standard argument used for failing whomever they want to fail regardless of what reality might be. Carefully consider what the director is saying, this would not be applicable for anyone who graduated from an accredited College. You would not be able to undertake any curriculum which expands or builds upon itself having this problem. Since the argument is one of utilization rather than intelligence the issue is not going from 200 to 300 or from 300 to 400 level coursework but rather from being able to make such a transition. Just some disparate facts sitting in your head, you don't have the capacity to make use of. To truly have this problem would have one just taking 100 or 200 level courses in a lot of different subjects without being able to undertake a degree program. It is an abstraction applied to the curriculum, and being such it could just as validly be applied to other curriculums. I have never witnessed anyone including myself being so disjointed. The only disjoint I observed is between their words and reality.
It can be gleaned from the Director`s words that they come to a different understanding if you repeat something and pass. Well it would be any student`s sincere hope that the initial understanding is accurate and independently verifiable. And this is the crux of the problem with these people much of what they are saying is not independently verifiable with independent meaning not in any way affiliated with UICOM.
If you are student in this school it would be prudent to completely ledger patients cared for as well as photocopy all the notes you make in the charts if possible. Because if you are going to be slammed, your history and physical skills will be completely cut down regardless of what actually transpires-yes, what is being stated in "UICOM 3" is refuted in the charts. I would not have been able to do the patient workups having the problem mentioned in "UICOM 3." I suppose she did the workups and I signed off on them-it just gets too silly with people like this. You will see these people totally denigrate what you did without producing the hospital records. They can't produce them since the hospital records refute what they are stating. At least with the photocopies you have some form of rebuttal, not that it will do you any good but it is better than nothing. Quite frankly just stay out of this place unless you are very desperate. . .
I will just call the links in the glossary, "Its Twisted" just to emphasize how little to do this has with reality. In the conversation the director is cloaking his words with credible concepts which would not be applicable to anyone in this stage of their training-a veritable medical dyslexia. And yet in the final assessment which is further removed from standard norms and yes reality even the cloaking is removed and it is just this raw UICOM nonsesense. To read what the Director considers to be part of the record click on the link called "Gaps & Deficits" on p.2 of the footnotes and also in the glossary of links. The Director in good faith is not assessing anything but rather applying a typecast.
University of Illinois College of Medicine is not a medical school or for that matter a school. The academic protocols are substandard; the grievances are a sham; there is a blatant double standard to discipline and the foreign residents are merely interested in changing their J-1 visa status. And if their academic, grievance and disciplinary archives are investigated the above will be verified in a more holistic sense.
They are literally creating the barrier upon which they base their assessments of you: it would be blatant typecasting if it were not for the terminology they use. The reason for the esoteric terminology is because they don't want it sounding like a problem coordinating/correlating/synthesizing is a glorified prerequisite but rather some medical thing involving different cognitive processes in the brain. And trust me they cannot clearly explain what those different cognitive processes are without making it seem like glorified prerequisites. It does not have anything to do with what you actually know, has been done, or if the barrier they create exists. Or more accurately, if you are to be slammed anything other than what you do or know is what is required. The reader would have to see things in context to truly appreciate how ridiculous this school is; context cannot be overemphasized because they have gotten accustomed to saying things when there is no context for what is being stated. These people are not educators. They have nothing in sum or of substance to give credence to their positions regarding these issues. These are a discreetly nefarious group of people, with slang being the most concise way of stating this-hiding under any rock they can get away hiding under-hence their lack of evidence and the need to resort to speculation. The University Of Illinois College Of Medicine is not reputable and needs to be independently investigated.
The footnotes to this Expose can be found at:
http://ourworld.cs.com/Palexa39757/UICOM/UICOM+Expose+Footnotes.doc
There is also relatively esoteric information on Medical Malpractice in the notes with a focus on the hysterectomy which a physician would not want you to know about. The below link is a reproduction of Chapter 9 from "Male Practice" (1981, Robert S. Mendelsohn MD) and is intended solely for educational and informational purposes:
http://ourworld.cs.com/Palexa39757/Health/The+Hysterectomy.pdf
http://www.hersfoundation.com/effects.html
It in my opinion is required reading for any woman advised to have a hysterectomy, and the second link from HERS for added emphasis. The PDF link, which should download in under a minute with dial-up, requires Adobe Reader 6 which can be downloaded for free at www.adobe.com.
KEYWORDS: Pre Medicine, Pre Med, Medical School, Med School, University of Illinois, U of I, University of Illinois College of Medicine, UICOM, Medical student, Med student, Medical Education, Education, United States Medical Licensing Exams, USMLE, National Board of Medical Examiners, NBME, University of Chicago, U of C, Northwestern University, Illinois Wesleyan University, Southern Illinois University, SIU, Loyola University, hysterectomy, heart disease, heart attack, University of Illinois Alumni Association
Finch University of the Health Sciences / The Chicago Medical School, Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, Midwestern University / Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, Rush University / Rush Medical School, Saint Louis University School of Medicine, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Illinois School of Medicine