From teen drug user to long-term recovery to recovery advocate to medical school to suicide.

[Anonymous]

She sounds like an absolutely brilliant but troubled person. She had a 4.0 in a difficult major, received many distinguished awards and scored in the 99% percentage on the MCAT (remarkably hard to do considering how many brilliant kids who study 24/7 take that test).

[Anonymous]

Very sad. Should Med schools not accept students with these backgrounds?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very sad. Should Med schools not accept students with these backgrounds?

Yeah it seems like she was set up to fail.

[Anonymous]

I think being female is making people feel far sorrier for her than they do for men with criminal records.

[Anonymous]

Well, it's not as if the pandemic will see a need for Doctors.

Stupid country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Physicians are human and you will find plenty of doctors who use drugs. I know someone who climbed out of that hole. I dare anyone in that industry to contradict me.

It's terribly hypocritical to have denied this talented young woman a chance to have a brilliant career in the medical field. She had left the drugs behind. It's unbelievable that she was ostracized for mistakes she made as a teen. Seriously disappointing.

She left the drugs behind but seems as though she had some mental issues going on. We all have dreams that will never ever happen but we don’t take our lives.

Agree. Sad.
It's just a job in the end and not worth killing yourself over. Even if you are working at 7/11.

Working at 7/11 is honest labor, don't knock it.

I did not knock it. Are you low IQ?

NP - you said “even if” you work at 7/11. That implies that it it less than other jobs. Talk about low IQ.

Come on, when someone's dream is to be a doctor, a cashier job is s step down. That's common sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very sad. Should Med schools not accept students with these backgrounds?

Yeah it seems like she was set up to fail.

Seems she should have researched that. Some mistakes can't be erased no matter how hard you try. She lacked resiliency obviously. Seems she still had issues. This probably proves their point.

[Anonymous]

This is why medicine is full of privileged whites and increasingly Asian profession. There is no room for people from lower SES backgrounds many of whom are POC to make mistakes. I feel like richer parents can make these types of mistakes go away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. How incredibly sad.

In my experience, residency programs are looking for reasons to eliminate candidates, because there are so many who are qualified. Unfortunately, this is an easy one - history of drug use and abuse.

Given that no one would match, and that this is probably known in the profession, the med schools should not have let her in or taken her money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. How incredibly sad.

In my experience, residency programs are looking for reasons to eliminate candidates, because there are so many who are qualified. Unfortunately, this is an easy one - history of drug use and abuse.

Given that no one would match, and that this is probably known in the profession, the med schools should not have let her in or taken her money.

this is a good point. i wonder why her own medical school did not match her at their hospital as a resident. i think what probably happened is she aimed too high: orthopedics is hard to get in to, even with a perfect record. so then she tried again, also in a reasonably competitive specialty (ER) but was perceived as "damaged" goods--a year out of school, recs from medical school profs would be "old" at that point, etc. by her third attempt she was really at a disadvantage. and we don't know what field she tried to match into on her third try. if it was ortho or ER medicine then again, those are hard fields to get spots in. Being 2 or 3 years out of school would make her a very poor candidate in and of itself.

perhaps she should have aimed lower to begin with. her medical school advisor should have said "hey, matching in ortho probably won't happen ". but again, she was a great candidate (drug past aside)a--too student, lots of ortho research, etc -so maybe she just had bad luck. there are good students who don't match every year and have to scramble for a spot after the match is done just because of bad luck. Even without a drug history there are many medical school grads who aim too high (selective programs in elective specialties) or just don't match due to bad luck. it's possible this happened and then this disadvantage plus the drug history disadvantage just really hurt her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. How incredibly sad.

In my experience, residency programs are looking for reasons to eliminate candidates, because there are so many who are qualified. Unfortunately, this is an easy one - history of drug use and abuse.

Given that no one would match, and that this is probably known in the profession, the med schools should not have let her in or taken her money.

this is a good point. i wonder why her own medical school did not match her at their hospital as a resident. i think what probably happened is she aimed too high: orthopedics is hard to get in to, even with a perfect record. so then she tried again, also in a reasonably competitive specialty (ER) but was perceived as "damaged" goods--a year out of school, recs from medical school profs would be "old" at that point, etc. by her third attempt she was really at a disadvantage. and we don't know what field she tried to match into on her third try. if it was ortho or ER medicine then again, those are hard fields to get spots in. Being 2 or 3 years out of school would make her a very poor candidate in and of itself.

perhaps she should have aimed lower to begin with. her medical school advisor should have said "hey, matching in ortho probably won't happen ". but again, she was a great candidate (drug past aside)a--too student, lots of ortho research, etc -so maybe she just had bad luck. there are good students who don't match every year and have to scramble for a spot after the match is done just because of bad luck. Even without a drug history there are many medical school grads who aim too high (selective programs in elective specialties) or just don't match due to bad luck. it's possible this happened and then this disadvantage plus the drug history disadvantage just really hurt her.

Plenty of MDs are successful without going through residency. I don't see this being the med school's fault. I think PP brings up good points that she was really going for competitive specialties and while her past may have been part of the reason she didn't match, it also may not have been. Many people, even with incredible scores and grades, don't match where they want to, and they pivot and find another way to be happy. That's the really sad part of this story, that she wasn't able to cope and find another way to be happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think some people are getting too focused on a tree and missing the forest.

The issue out there is not about one tragic individual's story, but the overall culture of 'no screwing up' that exists in some fields. This is relevant to most on DCUM, especially as it relates to those parents who are trying to guide teens through the time of experimentation and temptations. This is one area where, apparently, screw up once and you're are done, or funneled into another line of work. I'm sure their are many others as well.

It's tricky because a) you want to keep your kid from falling down this path where mistakes will cost them and b) you also don't want them to say "well, I'm so far down the path their is no coming back". I think that is why this story is posted in the Teens forum rather than the Careers or Health or News forum.

You realize that when you're a doctor, screwing up means other people losing their lives. That is why its such an unforgiving environment - its for the greater good. It's 100% right.

Np: in this case, I would not say she screwed up once. It seems like a series of screw-ups and agree with another poster that she should have been counseled in what her option were, realistically, going to be.

Essentially though, it doesn't matter how many times she screwed up before medical school. She really shouldn't have been allowed to attend and pay for it (as others have said - they were not looking out for her long term prospects).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think some people are getting too focused on a tree and missing the forest.

The issue out there is not about one tragic individual's story, but the overall culture of 'no screwing up' that exists in some fields. This is relevant to most on DCUM, especially as it relates to those parents who are trying to guide teens through the time of experimentation and temptations. This is one area where, apparently, screw up once and you're are done, or funneled into another line of work. I'm sure their are many others as well.

It's tricky because a) you want to keep your kid from falling down this path where mistakes will cost them and b) you also don't want them to say "well, I'm so far down the path their is no coming back". I think that is why this story is posted in the Teens forum rather than the Careers or Health or News forum.

You realize that when you're a doctor, screwing up means other people losing their lives. That is why its such an unforgiving environment - its for the greater good. It's 100% right.

Np: in this case, I would not say she screwed up once. It seems like a series of screw-ups and agree with another poster that she should have been counseled in what her option were, realistically, going to be.

Essentially though, it doesn't matter how many times she screwed up before medical school. She really shouldn't have been allowed to attend and pay for it (as others have said - they were not looking out for her long term prospects).

Not all those with a MD go to residency and practice medicine. She could have worked in a lab, for a pharmaceutical company, taught, gone into business. I know many successful people who completed med school and opted not to do a residency.

Medical schools should not be in the business of banning qualified students based on previous mistakes. That is only going to add more stress to teenagers to never, ever slip up. The real loss here is she had her heart set on one goal and when she didn't reach it, she took her life. We all need to teach our children coping skills. Life is full of disappointments. Limiting opportunities isn't the solution to navigating that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Medicine has always been very unforgiving of drug or alcohol use which makes sense given that physicians have incredible access to drugs. What happened to this girl is not unique.
The fact that she killed herself sadly supports medicine's decision not to train her. There are many people who attend medical school and can't complete residency training for a variety of reasons (addiction, financial, academic).
They go on to use their MD without doing a residency (research, pharmaceutical work , etc). These people have table their dreams, shift directions and make it work. They don't decided to end it all.

Also, given that she completed an internship year (first year of residency) means she was eligible to work as an attending MD ...

This. The bolded.

I hesitate to speak ill of the dead, but she did elegantly make their point for them.

[Anonymous]

Very sad story, for multiple reasons.

However, it needs to be acknowledged that they made the right decisions in this case. If she was so mentally unstable that she'd kill herself over this, there's absolutely no way she would not have slipped back into drug abuse when bad things happened to her in her career - deaths of patients, mistakes with horrible consequences, lawsuits, etc.