At a school clinical your preceptor threatened to fail you for talking to your program director about how she ran the clinical She failed you and now you have to repeat the rotation can you sue school?

Answer 1

Sure. But what can you prove? As long as the school had its policy documented and the preceptor documented your failure to meet the goals of the clinical rotation, you probably aren't going to win. And if you have to pass one clinical to start the next, you will fall even more behind schedule while you wait on a lawsuit. Look at your school's policy for appealing grades. Go to the dean. Objective observations about the instructor should not have caused you to fail. You can try checking with the local accredidation board for complaints about your school. I'm hearing more and more complaints about clinical instructors as schools scramble to fill these low-paying jobs. A similar incident happened at my school, but the instructor had written down progress notes for each day on each student that were retained by most students, demonstrating her inconsistencies and downright contradictions. In the future, for all of you doing clinicals, ask for a written evaluation from the instructor a few weeks into the rotation, before anything has happened, so you can use it to impeach the instructor later if she tries to claim that your progress has always been unsatisfactory. You can mess up at clinical- you are a student- you just need to demonstrate that you recognized the mistake, corrected it, and learned from it. The instructor is At Fault if she blindsides you at the end with a failing grade- she needs to identify problems as they occur and watch how you fix them- that is the point of a clinical rotation- though the administration may not wish to override the instructor.