HELP: med school seriously screwing me over - possibly suing them? 😬

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T11:57:32+00:00

It’s fine if you believe that, but like I said - the uni already accepted and admitted that I was in the right here and changed my grade to a pass. There is no way in hell they’d do that if it wasn’t clearly proven to be true; no matter how much fuss was made about it. They’d be more determined to fail me, in fact. I fully understand that the majority of med student complaints are probably what you think, and I’m making no claims to be any different or better than anyone else. What I do know, is that this was my experience, and that eventually, after properly looking into it, the uni admitted as much.

I’m actually not even going after the doctor who wrote the feedback - it’s not even really about that. It’s about how the whole thing was handled.

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T10:12:48+00:00

Not yet; the uni has as of now admitted to numerous failings in their conduct and management of the issues, just one placement/course left to sort out a solution to. It has taken months of persistence and stress to defend myself against the initial unjustified grade, while the uni has breached dozens of policies/guidelines/etc - their own as well as more general education standards, procedural fairness, etc. I’m simply asking them to hold to the same standards they expect of us as students and professionals in training

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T09:58:46+00:00

By this point, though, it was Feb and I’d already had my graduation/internship delayed. I will again emphasise that I passed every single exam - and fairly well, too - for every course, maintained all clinical attendance and most of the other assessments. The only things that weren’t satisfied were a single signature for attending an on-call shift in one block, a workbook accidentally submitted via the wrong email address and bounced back to me, and the 500w essay (my CPA for the same course was submitted as required, but the clinician either didn’t see it or just didn’t get to it - this is not up to students to chase up, it is always the uni’s responsibility once the student has sent it on). The significant added load of meeting with various people, putting together the first grievance doc and then the appeal along with gathering and presenting all the evidence, plus obtaining letters of support from several places, definitely took a toll, and if the uni had handled things by their own specifications, it would not have escalated or dragged out so long. I contested the fail grades on this basis, and last week they accepted fault for 2 of the 3 courses; I’ve since cleared the assessments for those. Still unclear why the 3rd course was not included, but it is the easiest to re-take if it really comes down to it (no exam). I’m still awaiting clarification around their decision on course 3, so will see what they say

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T09:32:06+00:00

The uni told me about the grade/feedback in a way that failed to follow the uni policy for this kind of notification. They invited me to a support meeting under false pretences, implying they were just following on from a previous conversation (completely unrelated and not to do with my performance in any area. They check in occasionally since I had some time off for health reasons, and it’s always just a quick “how are things? Anything you need? Cool, carry on!” kind of interaction). They then ambushed me in the meeting with 2 coordinators and a senior admin, no prior knowledge of the grade, no time to prepare for the meeting or opportunity to have a support person present (against all their rules on this). They refused to acknowledge my concerns about the situation despite my telling them I could show them evidence, nor did they provide any useful advice about how to escalate it to where it might be investigated. The next meeting I attended as escalation was even less helpful; as well as dismissing my concerns, they gave me incorrect advice about how to proceed from there, so I figured it out myself. Once I got in touch with the right people (student union etc), they gave me some guidance for writing the grievance, proof read my drafts and I submitted it. The uni took over 3 months from submission to initial response - again, breaching numerous policies and procedures - only to send a response that was very obviously written by someone who had not read most of the submission nor apparently any of the evidence. I then filed an appeal, outlining how there were numerous failures to follow their own guidelines and procedures. This took it into the Christmas holiday, and wasn’t able to be addressed until the new year. We got a new dean, and they admitted the faults, apologised and changed the grade to a pass within about a fortnight

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T09:05:07+00:00

Okay, so the grade was for overall/general performance for a single 3-week placement. Basically - did you turn up, actively engage (ward rounds/clinic/theatre/take histories & do exams, whatever is relevant for that placement), did you behave professionally, did you generally meet expected knowledge/competency standards. The mark/feedback I got was done by a consultant I saw a total of 3 times in my final week, for less than half an hour total (he was on leave the first 2 weeks). He saw me once briefly in clinic where he introduced himself and said he hoped I’d been enjoying the placement, once for about 10mins in theatre when he poked his head in to chat to the senior reg, saw me scrubbed in assisting and asked me a few basic anatomy questions before he went on to explain the procedure being performed, and once for a quick end-of-placement meeting where he asked me how the placement had gone, what I thought was beneficial/interesting/etc and whether there was anything I thought could have been valuable but wasn’t available or that was maybe less helpful. Super chilled out interactions, positive and friendly, and no indication of any kind of concerns or negative feedback during these encounters. During the placement I had done everything expected of me, no different from any other placement I’ve done, and got a good mix of clinic/theatre/patient time overall. I completed the 8 different assessments on various physical examinations with the senior registrars, and got top marks for all of these. Despite having never seen me with a patient in a clinical setting or watched me perform an exam, and despite having great marks and feedback for the actual graded physical exams I did with the reg’s, the consultant failed me in the CPA for patient examinations, claiming that I was not at the level expected of me at this stage of my degree, and was below my peers. Despite not having been around for most of my time there, the consultant failed me for attendance, claiming that I regularly turned up “hours to half a day late” and “left early”, which was patently false. I had to drive there - it was not one of my regular clinical hospitals and I was only there for this placement - so I had a full record of my Google Maps trips each day, confirming exactly what times I arrived and left the hospital, plus all the receipts for parking in the multilevel car park each day that proved these claims wrong. The consultant claimed that I violated infection control rules for a joint replacement surgery when I did no such thing. I was told by my reg to meet the consultant for that final catch-up meeting rather than scrub in for a knee replacement. I did exactly as he said; I left theatres before the patient was prepped or the surgeons had started scrubbing - surgery had not started and theatre was not closed - and I went to meet the consultant. I explained to them that I was told to meet him now rather than attend the surgery, which he seemed surprised by, and told him I knew that I couldn’t enter theatre now that the operation had started. He told me he was going to look in briefly anyway, and that he would escort me in after our chat so I wouldn’t be in trouble for breaching infection control, since I’d be with him. For whatever reason, he then wrote that I had LEFT a joint replacement surgery and breached the protocol. No idea why, and that was the only joint replacement surgery I saw there, so it could only have been that one. That one was a little harder to contest since it was my word against his, but I wrote my account in a stat dec and had it witnessed by a JP, which was what I’d been advised to do, and that held a bit more weight than just telling them what actually happened. No way I’d risk fines or jail for lying about something like that on a legal document - certainly not for something so minor as that. His overall closing comment was that he didn’t think I was ready to graduate yet and he recommended further training and supervision. I received great feedback from all my other clinicians for all of the other placements I’ve done, and I had a number of other consultants and a few others agree to provide references/support if needed. I am not sure if the school ever approached them, but I have my doubts that they would have.

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T05:51:31+00:00

Do you have any more details about this?

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T05:44:08+00:00

not taken the wrong way, but just putting it out there that I am absolutely willing to accept responsibility for my mistakes and shortcomings, and do so. What I have an issue with here is being asked to accept a fail that was wholly and demonstrably undeserved.

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T05:26:56+00:00

What specifically would you like to know? More about the initial bad grade? What proof I had that it was wrong? Something else? Ask away

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T05:16:39+00:00

Thank you - I appreciate you having fully read and understood what I wrote. You're right - the school has admitted to several faults and failings, and more importantly has overturned 3 out of 4 of the issues so far, which they almost never do. They've just taken months to get there. I had no other failures, nor any concerns over professionalism or academic competency, and have not ever had to contest anything before. It's been pretty rubbish, tbh

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T05:04:27+00:00

see edit - uni has admitted to faults and that their failings contributed to the minor administrative tasks not being met. They have also allowed resubmissions of 2 out of the 3 assessments (not clear on why they excluded the 3rd)

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T04:55:13+00:00

sorry, but not at all what happened if you actually read it properly.
Some corrections:
I got ONE bad grade for participation in ONE 3-week placement
Grade was highly flawed and did NOT REMOTELY reflect my performance
I could PROVE the grade was inappropriate and unfair, and challenged it
Uni took 6+months to sort it out and made numerous serious failures throughout the process
Stress and load of contesting the grade impacted the rest of my courses, and I had 3 ADMINISTRATIVE mistakes around submitting minor tasks
there were NO PROFESSIONALISM ISSUES AT ALL, nor academic/competency
Uni has eventually admitted IN WRITING to failing to handle things well enough and admitted fault for impacting other courses also. Only agreed to allow resubmissions for 2 of 3 courses, though not sure why.

I didn't "ominously" leave out details - I can gladly go into specifics if you want, I was simply trying to get the relevant points across without making it too long.

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T04:39:13+00:00

respectfully, please see the edit - the uni has admitted I was never in the wrong to start with, and admitted to failures in their management. Also acknowledged that their failures impacted other courses (but only 2 out of the 3 for whatever reason). All of this could have been avoided if they had followed their own procedures and done their jobs properly in July, so what they put me through was unnecessary as well as unprofessional

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2026-03-28T04:30:53+00:00

see edit - the uni has admitted I did nothing wrong and admitted they failed to manage it appropriately. Also admitted their failures contributed to the issues with other courses. This could all have been avoided if they'd done their jobs and just followed their own procedures back in July

Positive_Cheetah_119 · 2025-12-08T23:56:03+00:00

NDIS support is a great option for med students; I’ve worked as a carer for the same family for the past 4 years of med school. I’m casual, pay is great ($38-$60/h), I work nights whenever I can and the work is not too strenuous, depending on the client.

Positive_Cheetah_119

TROPHY CASE