The [academic] coup: Bringing down the big, bad senior attending

I know, I know. I’ve been gone for a couple years. 

But do I have a story for you! It involves HR, a wall-length fish tank, and fighting the MAN.

So, this blog left off in 2018. It stopped suddenly, because that summer, I became the center of a sexual harassment investigation at Big Academic Medical Center. Against…<drumroll>…Mansplaining Program Director (MPD). 

Yes, this really happened. And, given that HR put the fear of God into me to not say anything about the investigation for fear of a libel lawsuit from MPD, I simply stopped blogging. Hell, I even got an actual writing job since then, without ever updating this blog. 

But I owe you guys this story.

So, back in the summer of 2018, I was just finishing the first year of fellowship and starting the second year of fellowship. My victory lap. The extra year of fellowship that I was told I needed to get a faculty job at Big Academic Medical Center; this did not end up being true. It was one of several lies that was thrown in my direction to get me to stick around for an extra year of fellowship. And, I wish I was kidding, but this was driven primarily by the older attendings who are slow at writing reports and really just need the labor of the fellows to get their work done.

One Saturday morning, I was at the playground with my kids, when one of my co-fellows called me. Y’all know something is serious when somebody calls your phone instead of just texting. I mean, you’re like ready to get into your car and find them on the side of a highway or something. So, anyhow, I answer the phone, and she sounds shaken.

“DefiantB, we need to do something.”

She tells me that she had been rounding with MPD that morning, when, unexpectedly, she somehow became cornered between him and a tech in a small room. MPD was railing about politics, and then, to prove some sort of point about his thoughts about the Middle East, exclaimed that an entire country in the Middle East should be bombed and “returned to nature.” Yes, he felt that calling for genocide of an entire country was relevant on rounds that day. 

My co-fellow was horrified. She asked, in four different ways, to “go see the last patient,” but she couldn’t leave the room because MPD was standing in the doorway. She just, desperately, wanted to finish rounding and get the hell out of there.

So, when she called me, she was telling me about what happened. But we both knew that this was just one of many instances of feeling extraordinarily uncomfortable with this attending. There was the time that he made me drop everything and tell him that even staring at women can be creepy. And the other time that he yelled and called the lead female tech a “Bitch!” loudly on the phone in front of myself and another female fellow. There was the time that he made me comment on a picture of Ivanka Trump in a short skirt (seriously, he tapped on the screen and asked me if it was “too short”). Another time, he felt the need to tell another female fellow about his sex life, or lack thereof, back in medical school (about some retreat regarding taking a sexual history: “We were nerds, this is where we learned that stuff.” She wanted to vomit). 

Not to mention that his general form of “teaching” was just to ask pimp questions and then derisively ask why we didn’t know the answers. You know, your typical narcissistic attending. But, this morning, he crossed a line. We knew that this was the line that could trigger an HR investigation, and maybe even get rid of this guy.

“Are you in? Will you submit all of your stories today to HR, and I’ll submit mine?”

There was a pause. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I actually hesitated. The hierarchy of medicine trains you to never speak out about anyone above you in the chain. This guy could be making you look at pictures of Ivanka Trump in a short skirt and calling female staff “bitches” all day long, and it really doesn’t even occur to most of us to report anything. You just think…this is probably normal. And, what if this gets back to me? What if this jeopardizes my ability to get a faculty position at Big Academic Medical Center? What if word gets around that I’m a problem child, and my evaluations get worse? In that little 5-second pause, that’s what was swirling in my mind.

“Ok, sure. When I get home, I send it.”

My statement ended up being five pages long, single-spaced. I submitted it to the HR website that night. The user interface for this type of “ethics reporting” system has a hilarious way of trying to quantify whatever information you’re about to divulge. There’s check boxes to click through- was there sexual harassment? Physical harassment? And my favorite- “time theft.” Then, you hit Submit, and just assume it’s getting printed out and sitting in a stack somewhere.

That is not what happened.

That Monday, my co-fellow mentioned this event to an attending she was working with at the other, Bigger Hospital. That attending was alarmed and notified the Division Chief. The Division Chief was alarmed and notified the Chief of all Chiefs of this Bigger Hospital. The Chief of all Chiefs then has his administrator send me an email, to meet with him at 4:45pm that day. 

Uh, what?!

So, I go to the office of the Chief of all Chiefs. It’s a nearly unmarked door, which leads to a waiting room. Then, the office itself…was seriously bigger than my entire apartment in medical school. There was the desk on one side, then some chairs and couches on the other; this office had its own living room!!

Then, you look to the left, and there isn’t a wall. Well, I guess it’s a “wall,” but not the kind of plebian, cream-colored wall that you or I have in our houses.

The entire left side of the room had a wall-length fish tank as a wall. Can you imagine if your office had an embedded fish tank to separate your office from the other guy’s?! Y’all. It was like I walked into an episode of “MTV Cribs: Chairman’s Office Edition.” 

The Chief of all Chiefs greeted me, a very friendly guy*. He had a senior administrator next to him, there to take notes. (I guess when you’re the guy with an apartment-sized office and a fish tank wall, you don’t really have to take your own notes anymore.)

I told them the whole story. And as many additional stories as I could think of. Senior Administrator furiously took notes. This Chief of all Chiefs sounded very concerned- “If this happened at my hospital, this guy would be fired.” They threw around terms like “Title IX” and “There should be special protections for your identity since this is sexual harassment.” Like, oh wow. That hadn’t actually even occurred to me. My program director making me comment on pictures of short skirts, and making me tell him why he “can’t just look” at women, and angrily calling women “bitches” counts as…sexual harassment. Right. I was now in the center of a sexual harassment investigation!!

While this chief was not directly in the line of succession from MPD, he did wield a LOT of power. By the next afternoon, MPD was SUSPENDED. And not just suspended- he was locked out of his email. He was given strict orders to not speak to any trainees. He was barred from physically entering the premises. 

So, that escalated quickly! 

He ended up being suspended for two months. In that time, another chairman ended up taking over the role of Program Director. We took this opportunity to make a mad dash and get as many changes pushed through as possible– no more 7am lectures!! (They had been reinstated since my last post.) I got my 8 weeks of upcoming maternity leave approved! It was glorious!

Then, there’s the outcome. There was good news and bad news. The bad news was that MPD was not fired. His chairman sent us all an email, telling us that he would continue to “work with all levels of learners.” That was a slap in the face. It really hurt. It still hurts. 

The good news…was that he dethroned from the position of Program Director! We lobbied for a younger, more reasonable attending to get the job, and he did. Immediately, changes were made to the fellowship. Changes we had been asking for over the course of years. They happened immediately. This is why leadership matters.

And, at the end of the day, I did still get the faculty position at Big Academic Medical Center. I lasted there for, oh, 18 months. And that is another story for another day 🙂

Wanna chime in with your stories of HR reporting? Or wall-length fish tanks? Feel free to comment here on this blog, Twitter, or Facebook. It’s good to be back!

-Defiant B, MD

*Footnote: This Chair of all Chairs himself was fired around a year later. For some sort of impropriety. Yep.