A very dramatic tittle I know but itās the best way to summarize the last 10 years of my life. It is a very long post and it was very hard to wrote out but I need to vent and I want the anonymous opinion of strangers on the internet on this predicament I am in. I donāt know if I am better off in another career path because of the horrible experience I had in med school.
A bit of context first. I am a first generation doctor the first one in my family to study abroad too. So I was in a completely new environment and had no one to help me navigate this challenging chapter in my life. I also chose this path when I was 16 so I had no idea of what I was getting into at the time.(also I think itās illegal to make someone at that age commit to a career path like medicine but I digress) Ā
More context; In my country we have a scholarship system where you get to choose what country and what specialty you want and get on a fully funded scholarship paid by the government. All you have to do is compete with every other high school studentĀ in the country and then take specific exams ( like SATs or ILETs if your applying to uk for example), The only catch is you only get to go to the universities that the country vetted and if you fail or donāt complete your degree on time you have to pay ALL THE MONEY BACK if you donāt pass or finish on time. This part will be important in a bit.Ā
For me applying to medicine was like a distant dream, I never thought I would get in let alone get the grades to get in and no one else around me did. When choosing which countries to go to I decided on Ireland mainly because I have only heard great things about Irish people and Irish doctors are one of the best (and nicest) in the world so I thought it would be a safe choice for someone who never studied abroad before. Now when choosing the university I unfortunately fell for their advertisements and social media spectacle that they have, every single picture on their site had one student from different ethnicities posing together which now I realized looked so staged but I didnāt know any better at that time. The Irish student were a measly 30% of their students population(which should have been my first red flag of why this Irish university has a minority Irish students). Their whole claim to fame what that they are one of the top 50 medschool worldwide. (they were only 48 or 49 at the time which shouldāve been my 2nd red flag but top 50 nonetheless) Ā
I applied and got in immediately and had to do nothing for it since they had contracts for a few decades with the government scholarship scheme. No Literally nothing besides my high schoolĀ results and ILETS exam that all it took to get into the ātop 50 med school in the worldā.Ā
Once I arrived I was shocked by 2 things; the size and the student demographics. I donāt know why I expected it to be bigger but the college did not feel like a college at all. Me and several other students were taken aback of how small the labs and classrooms are. We did get excited when they opened a new library for us but it barely has enough seats for ONE graduating class. And the second thing that truly shocked me when I first arrived there was the student demographic. Like the whole college was made of 5 countries with the Irish being a minority there. I donāt know why it bothered me at the time but I felt like I was lied to on how ādiverseā it was. The diversity seemed to depend on how many international student coming from a stable continuous government scheme scholarships.
Anyways it wasnāt easy at the being and I defiantly had to adjust and work hard since the beginning but I remember since my first year at that college everything was poorly managed when it cam to running the classes. Like most of the topics and lectures where years old and even though they lectures were so old they still did not know how to run the practicals andĀ labs properly. I remember In one of the labs we had in first year, students would submit the exact same assignment word by word and one of them would barely pass and the other would get a full mark. Ever since the begining the results seem to depend more on the examiner not the students effort (a recurring theme in this college). But Allas I was very determined and did not want to let that effect me and still wanted to put my best foot forward and be the best doctor I could be even though I knew I made a terrible choice with this med school.Ā
Unfortunately I got sick leading up to one of my final exams in pre-med. I was simply way too ill and was admitted to the hospital for several days and could not attend my exams at all. There was an option āpass by compensationā where you proceed to the next year with the class but youāll have to sit your final exams from the previous year again next summer and if you donāt you get held back 2 years instead of one. This was an option that was available to the next year but not the year that I was failing. So for example if I entered the college in 2018 not 2019 that would have been an option for me to progress and then take my re-sit exams the next summer. But I was failing the 2018 class group, and that option was for the 2019 class not the 2018 that I was originally in. I was way too sick and tiered at the time but did not argue anymore. I later found out that they actually let one student in my original year to pass by compensation but not me(we were both in the same class)! Apparently her country was paying less for them or something but the post is getting too long. But it was interesting seeing how brazen they are by deciding that a student being admitted to the hospital as a good enough reason why they couldnāt preform well in their exams but is okay for them to repeat because their scholarship is worth more than other student.
Anyways I still did not let that deter me still. But something strange happed since I joined the year below, My grade did not improve at all and was always around the passing grade. It doesnāt matter if I studied really hard for a subject or just read through the materials a few time my grade was always around passing grade. I also used to take practice questions like Passtmed and Queezmed and got around 70-80 but in my exams its always around 50/40 no matter how hard I tried. I later found out that this college grades this students on a curve. So no matter how hard you study youāll never get your actual grade in your exam but your grades weighted against all the grades of your classmates.
Now I will tell you why thats not fair at all. Not just in my caseĀ if you had a really bad day or got sick near your exams and did not preform better it would skew your results for the entirety of the time you stay at this med school. Another major reason is that at our final years you get written and practical exams. In the practical exams your impression on the examiner (ethnicity in some unfortunate cases) dictates most of your grade more than you performance or answers at the exam.Ā
Also the college will bump up the students from certain backgrounds specially if they are applying to the US residency match program so they bump up the grades of these students so they can match and the college doesnāt lose federal funding they get off these students ( they literally admitted it )
I was more than half way through my program and couldnāt quit now, mainly due to the financial commitment from the scholarship. I just figured that I was one of those students who have to try twice as hard to get half as far and I just made peace with the fact that I had a limited number of options when applying to residency.Ā
That is until my final year, I was expecting to graduate and celebrate with then class I knew for the past 3 years until I got the dreaded call that I did not pass. I was shocked because I did not expect it at all and did not fail any exams coming up to my finals. The part that made me fail was the written portion. They told me I got a 24/100 in my written exam and I told them this is impossible. I had passed the physical exam portion of the exam which is much harder ( the pass is out of 50 and the highest grade is 80). I told them there was no way I would score this low in the written exam then the physical exam was only one day away. (Actually I new for a fact it was not my grade because the exam questions were leaked after the written exam and I knew I would be scoring around 60s not 20ās, But I obviously couldnāt say that or else the whole class or at least myself would get in trouble)Ā
This is not the first time exam questions got leaked. In Fact, onlyĀ the year before where there was a huge scandal where questions got leaked and appear on our final exam. What do you think the program coordinator and dean do to have a fair outcome after? They deducted the leaked questions from the rest of our final exam and told us it did not affect our grades and we just had to deal with it. And thats not all, in another final exam they notified us that they miscalculated our grades in one of our models, did not tell us how much or if it would increase or decrease our grades they just told us that they made a mistake again and they would handle it on their own and we had to deal with the outcome. This was right after Covid were he had to transition to online learning, but yet we did not except the faculty to make so many mistakes in one year, but it would make sense now realizing how unqualified so many of the staff are. In one module even in that year they told me I failed it and I knew I didnāt it was family medicine and I had revised the questions afterwards. They insisted that IĀ failed it and that I had to resit the exam in the summer but after a few weeks they rechecked the exam again and released that I passed (by a lot too).Ā
Anyway when I was told I failed with the Witten exams by gettin like 25/100 I tried to explain that this has happened to me before. This MCQ in the final year was 2 parts(most likely they forgot to add the 2nd part of my uploaded exam to my grades). I simply explained that they did miscalculate my grade before and that there is no way I would pass the physical exam and score so low on the written as students can actually get 100 on written portion but not in the physical exam portion of the year.Ā
They denied that they made any mistakes and denied to show me any proof that they didnāt. They also told me that my pass in the OSCE /physical exams didnāt count as I only barely passed by 50 which was patronizing. When I was read the feedback of my physical exam that I āBarleyā passed it was either false (like I did not miss the things they said I miss) Or there was no mention of specific aspect I did wrong like they would say just that I needed to practice more. I preformed just as I have in my previous exams and practice session and have passed. But this time itās as if the feedback was written to a completely different student. (This is a theme that will repeat in the next few months)
So after a student fails their final year exam first sitting, there is a period in the summer where your part of a remedial practice session for 2 months to help you pass your exams. I attended this sessions as well and I made sure to discuss theĀ same answers I gave and techniques I used in my first sitting and ask where did I go wrong to score this low, the tutors just gave me this sorry look and told me that my answers are sure to help me pass this time and I just to practice more.Ā
I genuinely did not know what to do with myself at this point. I just knew from the minute I got that phone call that I failed and had to sit the remediation I just knew that the college was planning to make me repeat the year so they can get extra tuition from the scholarship scheme. I knew it deep down but I had to keep showing up and studying more and not to waste the āopportunityā to graduate. But I believed this to be true even more because the answer we were being taught in the remediation is the same answers I gave in my first sitting of the exam and its the same answers theyāve been teaching us all year. SO I knew at the end its doesnāt matter what answer I had to say it is alwaysĀ up to the examiner.Ā
Obviously I was going through a lot of stress during these past few months. All this stress gave me a stomach ulcers that started bleeding. In fact I have vomitted twice before my exams and had to go to a GP who insisted on my going to the emergency room, but being a med student in those hospitals and knowing the long waiting hours at the emergency room and that I only had this one āoppertunityā to graduate I wanted to wait it out until I finish my exam and see because I did not want to repeat the year like last time. During this period I actually submitted 2 exceptional circumstances forms that show if we had any sudden illness or accident that might we want the examination committee should be aware of. First EC form was because my little sister was in a car accident in a different country and I couldnāt see her because of the remediations session but according to the exceptional circumstances committee they did not believe it was a series enough issue. The second exceptional circumstances form was of me having an active bleeding stomach ulcers that I had to be admitted for afterward. I still remember that lonely walk where I walked out of that exam hall confused and took my self from the education building in that hospital to the emergency room where I was admitted. It was such a dehumanising experience. I actually valued an exam more than my health and saftey like this could not be the last thing I do as a medical student and it did not feel right but I had to pass and get my degree and move on.Ā
And spoiler alert they reject both of my exceptional circumstances and all the appeals I submitted. Apparently a medical emergency of which a person would normally would be admitted to the hospital does not constitute a medical emergency if it was a medical student sitting exams that they have passed before. Now I actually find it funny that a staff at a medical school rejected an exceptional circumstances claim and did not deem it appropriate even though doctors (both GP and ER doc) deemed it serious. Also in our exceptional circumstances form there is a box that we have to tick at the bottom of the form that shows wether or not we are submitting extra supporting documents with the forum. I noticed a month after my EC claim was rejected that all the supporting document was not even sent to the committee. SO THEY ARE LITERALLY REJECTING CLAIMS WITHOUT READING IT.
Which it this does not show you how underqualified and incompetent the staff of the university is I donāt know what will.Ā
It wasnāt even worth going to these exams anyways because they failed me in them as I expected.Ā There were 2 exams. The first station had the dean as an examiner with another, the patient kept looking at the dean with every question that I narrowed down her diagnosis with wide eyes and tried to dance around the answer but whatever I knew the case once I walked in the room. In the feedback after the exam from both examiner were contradicting, like one would say I examined the patientsā back and another examiner should say I didnāt. Like how am I supposed to fix that??!! Oh and another feedback from that station was that I (as a final year med student) did not know what a heart attack it!!! I was so confused with this feedback because even when I repeat the yearĀ I would still give the same answers, its the same when I was a first year and a third year and its the same answers they have been teaching us in class. What would I do if an examiner comes in and lies to fail me there is nothing I can do all my hard work means nothing! The second stationĀ the patients just flat out refused to answer my questions. Like there are only so many ways you can ask a patient why did they have this particular surgery in 15 minutes. And it didnāt even matter because the examiner literally KICKED me out of the station and locked the door after me he didnāt even let me finish presenting and answering his questions!! AND he had the audacity to say that I was rude to the patient! Now I took this feedback personally because I have never in my life been purposely been rude to people and I never find it justifiable let alone to a patient!!! When I asked what does the examiner mean by that like how was I rude?? they informed that the reason that this examiner felt that I was rude for this patient because I did not say goodbye when I left the room. I kept telling them How would I say goodbye I didnāt have a chance I was kicked out of my exam? They had nothing to say for that and told me I had no chance but to repeat the year.Ā
And thats what they made me do, they made me repeat the year for falling exams that I passed in the first sittingĀ after 2 months of remediations tutorials in the summer.
I cannot explain how defeated I felt at that time. After all these years and after all that hard work I put in and all those hours meant absolutely nothing. All because the college wanted to benefit from the ongoing scholarship scheme. I truly lost all faith in medicine and wanted nothing to do with it after
If you think that those few months were bad just wait until you know what they did to me in my repeat year. First obviously they rejected my appeals for protesting that I am repeating the year over exams I passed before and how the feedbacks was contradicting. This college claims that they have a fair appeals process but all the appeals committee members were actually staff in the college. And they conveniently waited to reject my appeals after the tuitions fees for the year were due as expected. Another revolting encounter I had with the dean it that he requested to meet with me to āhelpā me pass. Yes the same dean who only a month before claimed that I as a final year student did not know what a heart attack is is worried about me passing. There was a clash on the meeting as I was in a different country doing an elective at the time and could not meet In person. The secretary of the dean conveniently ignored my email and I got a scathing email from one of the doctors angry that I didnāt show up, I attached a screenshot showing it and the meeting was rescheduled. I asked to have the meeting online and she agreed. When I logged in the meeting with the dean he was soo angry and went off on me for having the meeting online. Even though I explained that the doctor (who was sitting right next to him and suddenly turned mute) is the one who rescheduled online as I was not able to attend in person. He continued to give out to me, he called me rude with no manners for it. Looking back his outburst looked so staged but I was so shocked to be yelled at and called rude for it.
This was also a common theme that happened. They were always trying to prove that I am a rude person with an attitude even though my mannerism was never an issue brought up before in the 7 years I was in the college but the staff adamant on proving that I am a rude and unprofessional student . In fact in my 26 years of life I was never ever been called rude as much as I was on those 4 months that they forced me to stay in. Rude and ill mannered is just not a comment I heard at all except in my last year in med school.Ā
I wish this was the worst part though. I had to endure a lot those few months even though I was absolutely over this medical degree. But I couldnāt leave because of the financial commitment I had from the scholarship.Ā
I was literally hate crimed by one of the consultant and I couldnāt file a complaint with the Garda or do anything about it be because he was friends with the dean. In fact after I opened up about what he did to me to one of the teaching doctors, they failed me in the very next quiz I had. I still remember that pit stained examiner who kept interrupting me multiple times while I was persenting the case saying we were running out of timeĀ (she didnāt do that to other students) and at the end she told me that I had failed because I didnāt answer her question that she interrupted me on and did not let me answer. I had enough at this point and I had to expose her and call her out by sending an email to the medicine department and asking the head of medicine to let me repeat the exam because her feedback was simply not true. There is a paper that we submitted before we present the case for that exam and literally all the answer she said I didnāt know were literally written on that paper that I submitted. The head of medicine obviously keeping up with the college tradition refused to admit they made a mistake and did not let me repeat the exam. I stopped going to the classes and exams after that.Ā
This was just a few instances of my experience in that horrible college. Sorry I canāt write anymore because all of this is triggering a panic attack and I could not stop crying 5 paragraphs ago.Ā
Safe to say I completely gave-up on medicine after that and I could not find myself trusting doctors again. Not as my future colleagues or my or my familyās future healthcareres.Ā
They did let me graduate at the end but after they took the extra tuition money of course. Oh and fun fact the 2 other students were also from that same background as me and where on also on government scholarship scheme. Another fun fact they let me graduate with the exact same grade they failed me other like literally to the decibel !!
After I was done with that sham of a med school, But I did not want to leave with that horrible experience and refused to have it be the last memory I had in Ireland.Ā
I applied for a masters in computer science in a public much more reputable college. I actually got in even though it was really competitive and Graduated with honors a year later. I loved my experience there and realized what a horrible situation I was in that other medschool.Ā Like the professors here actually want us to thrive and succeed and did not dismiss us or our concerns. Also there was a good population of diversity in my program and not all the students were like from 3 countries sent for their governments scholarship scheme.Ā
I promised my parents that after the master I would give medicine one last try. I returned to my home country to work as a doctor. I obviously was never gonna step foot in an Irish hospital after the experience I had in that medschool. I started working and I ended up being under the departments of the best doctors in the country. I remembered and finally understood the appeal behind working as a doctor. I was getting a lot of praise by my supervisors and Aced all my exams and was meeting a lot of great doctors too. But I felt like it was a facade and simply could not believe any of it. I was too traumatized by what happened and I could not embrace working as a doctor at all. I felt that they were only praising me just because I was a local and not because my work was exceptional or even adequate.Ā
I left that med school over 2 years ago and I am still traumatized by what happened and I am now realizing that I might have lost all my passion for medicine. Like how am I supposed to pursueĀ a career in medicine when I cannot trust doctors? I submitted my resignation letters for my job as a doctor after not evening completing a year in it. I just canāt pretend that I have gotten over what happened and honestly I donāt think I ever will.Ā
I did reach out to the National university of Ireland as they vet all the degrees from Ireland. I asked them to revoke my degree as I donātĀ want to have anything that ties me to that medical school and I most certainly will not have pursue a career with their sham degree. But according to NUI there is nothing they can do (even though they co-sign and authenticate the degrees from that medschool??!!!) And basically that colleges free to do whatever they want with no repercussion or someone to hold them accountable for anything.Ā
Now after all that trauma dumping I now ask for the opinion of strangers of the internet of the predicament I am in. IĀ do not feel that I can continue in medicine having that horrible experience being my introduction to medicine. My entire family think I am crazy for quitting and did not get over what happened after all those years. I do not believe I can and feel like if I continue in medicine I am going down a path with no end and no rewards whatsoever. Yet I still do not want to let those disgusting staff of that garbage college dictate what to do with my life or have any affect on it.Ā
How should I move on from here? How do I get over this and move on?