“An Indiana doctor who was fired from a Nebraska medical school more than a decade ago has been arrested on suspicion of killing four people with ties to the school in two separate attacks five years apart.”
Weird!
Getting fired from residency is a pretty big deal - far more serious than getting fired from any other kind of job. In the old days you could work as a general practitioner if you didn’t finish residency, but nowadays due to the emphasis on being board certified/board eligible it is very hard to work as a doc if you don’t finish a residency and generally if you do get a job it will be a crappy one.
This is why most residencies don’t fire people lightly - you have to do something very, very bad at most places to get fired. However, there are some “malignant” programs that have a reputation for firing people over stupid stuff.
A lot of people don’t really understand when they are pre-meds that the decision to go med school is a bit of a gamble that they will be able to finish a residency successfully. Unless you’re very lucky and can convince some other residency to give you a chance despite already having failed once, you are pretty much screwed in terms of your career if something happens and you can’t finish residency. He probably felt like his life had been ruined and was trying to get revenge for it.
Wow. Looks like a killer.
From the article, it sounds like he did complete a residency somewhere (they say it’s not clear where) and that he’s had medical licenses in Illinois, California, and a (temporary ?) one for Indiana that is nearing expiration (they all expire at the end of July, from what I’ve seen, so that doesn’t mean anything necessarily). I’m betting that assuming he did get somewhere else to take him, every hospital/practice he applies to asks the first program WTF happened, and he gets rejected based on their answer.
In other news, it would be nice if you would warn people when your link includes a video that starts by itself.
Just sayin’
Roddy
There was a resident who was dismissed by a program at the hospital where I used to work; of course they couldn’t tell us why, but we all knew it was because he was convicted of domestic violence against his wife. He was one of the best doctors we ever had in that program, too - at least on the surface. We don’t want people like this as doctors, that’s for sure.
p.s. Killing a professor’s housekeeper and his 11-year-old son? Wow. That’s just sickening.
He does bear a startling resemblance to George Zimmerman if that’s what you are getting at..
How did they catch him??? The killings seems so random, I’m shocked they linked them and traced them back that far (assuming he’s guilty, of course).
I always said if I needed to kill someone I’d wait about 10 years first. If I still want to kill them after 10 years, I’ve had time to plan and enough time has passed I won’t get caught (probably). If I’ve changed my mind, then all the better. Murder is a pretty big deal after all. But now I’m rethinking my plan…
Or you could run Flashblock in your browser, so that Flash videos don’t automatically start.
Sorry, Roderick. I never noticed it myself (until I went back and looked after seeing your post) because it didn’t start for me by itself (I use Firefox with addons like Noscript and Adblock).
I disapprove of murder but I gotta give props for grudge-holding.
Just a slight hijack - I had no idea medical licenses expired. Is renewal just a matter of paying a fee and submitting paperwork or is it more complicated? And while I’m at it - is there reciprocity among states for transferring/recognizing medical licenses?
Back to the OP - yep, that’s a heckuva grudge, assuming he’s guilty…
Yeah, they expire (I think it’s every 2-3 years? I don’t handle that task) and you have to renew them. End of July expiration is what I’ve seen for Illinois. I don’t know how it’s handled with other states but have known doctors with 2-3 states they’re licensed in.
I’ve handled applications to request privileges (for admitting patients, etc.) at hospitals, and those are immensely complicated processes. I worked for one doctor who’d been practicing in his particular field of medicine in the US for nearly 40 years, and most requests for privileges involved having to prove (since he was born in another country and went to medical school there) that he had taken the exams that allowed him to practice in the US. Never mind the decades living here, the CV showing his history of practice, you had to document that too, and that’s in addition to citing where/when he’d graduated college and med school, where he’d done residency and fellowship, if he’d passed his boards or not, etc.
So yeah, my first thought was that maybe he didn’t ever finish his residency, but if he’s passed the licensing process in three different states (which has to at least be as stringent in the whole “did you really do this stuff” process as applying for hospital privileges does, I’d think), then I would be dumbfounded if he hadn’t, somehow.
Hmm, just realized: potential problem with my theory that he did finish. The only thing I can’t remember is if residents get medical licenses. Probably yes, since they are MDs. But I can’t imagine that you can just tell three different state licensing boards “oh yeah, I’m totally still working on my residency (which should be done by now)” over the course of a decade and no one checks anything.
I just looked up medical license renewal in Maryland - it’s $522 ($622 after Sept 30) and doctors are required to complete 50 units of continuing medical education (CME) for each licensing period. The fee is an oddly specific amount. But it is reassuring that in this state, doctors are expected to keep learning stuff.
So I learned something today. 
They do if you don’t renew them. Some people put them on “inactive” status, because they don’t think they will work in that state in the near future, and renewing the license requires less red tape than if they simply let it lapse.
I’m a pharmacist, licensed in 3 states, and this will happen to me too if I don’t renew them next year. Interestingly, I am retired and have no desire to do it again, but I’m keeping all of them because you just never know what could happen, and I worked too hard to get them to let them lapse.
I didn’t see him listed on the Illinois registry, but Hispanics often use multiple names.
p.s. It’s about $200 for each state for me, and I have to do 30 hours of continuing education for all of them, and one state requires that I do 2 hours each of law and patient safety. No, I don’t have to do 90 hours; the 30 hours can be used for each state’s license.
In Virginia it’s 60 hours of CME every 2 years but at least 15 have to be in person (no just reading something on the internt and taking a test). The licenses expire at the end of your birthday month. Renewing is not a big deal. I think I just had to certify that I had no arrests for non-traffic violations, no malpractice claims, and that I hadn’t been fired, cited, reviewed, had privileges denied, reduced, or changed, or been talked to, or looked at supiciously by any hospital, practice, state board, controlled substance agency, or random person on the street in the last 10 years or else submit an essay describing the situation and as long as the check clears I continue to get my certificate that says I can practice medicine and surgery in this state (although trust me, you do NOT want me practicing surgery).
Iowa requires that I list my CEs, Missouri only asks me to state whether I’ve done them or not, and Illinois has 3 questions: have you done your CEs, do you wish to renew, and are you obligated to pay child support? They can and do suspend or revoke licenses for being more than 30 days’ in arrears, unless you can demonstrate genuine hardship. All the state do random checks WRT whether people really did do their CEs, and yes, I’ve known a few people who lied and got caught.
And Illinois’ child support thing isn’t just for health care professionals. Anyone with a state license is covered by this, and it includes auctioneers, Realtors, boxing promoters, and a few other things I can’t recall right now. Who has the largest number of professional discipline citations, and why? Locksmiths, because they lied about their criminal record. :rolleyes: :smack:
He was arrested for DWI and was in possession of a handgun, so maybe the handgun was matched to the bullets that killed the professor?
For the latest killings I assume the first looked at spouses, lovers, neighbors… and then later looked at the medical school to see if it was job related. Probably they interviewed several professors and one of them casually mentioned that the first doctor’s kid and housekeeper was killed and no killer was ever found so they started looking at connections between the first doctor and second doctor–and this intern turned up.
Why is it significant that some victims lived near Warren Buffet? The article goes out of its way to mention this twice.