VCOM College Catalog and Student Handbook

Students who have serious mental health disorders that impair their ability to function in stressful situations are not generally able to be successful in the curriculum or in the responsibilities required for safe and effective patient care. Students must be able to tolerate mentally taxing and emotionally taxing workloads. Applicants who have conditions that do not allow mentally taxing workloads must consider the long hours of study, the hours required in the classroom and laboratories, and the stress of test performance when applying. Students must have the mental and emotional stability to be able to safely and effectively care for patients without medication known to adversely affect intellectual abilities and clinical judgment. Students must have the emotional stability and motivation to deliver patient care and to make emergent decisions at all times. The ability to adapt to changing environments and stressful situations and to display compassion and integrity, while maintaining the necessary intellectual capacity to care for patients is required. Applicants or students who have mental impairments that cannot be resolved with treatment and result in significant mental impairment that renders the student to be lacking in the required mental capacity to maintain safety, without substantial supervision, for patient care, are not eligible for admission or continued enrollment. The student must have cognitive, interpersonal and social capacity for the vocational effectiveness required for medical practice. VCOM considers impairment from addiction to be a serious mental illness. Impaired physicians from substance abuse have unpredictable incapacitation of mental judgement, alertness, and emotional stability, resulting in a risk to patients for receiving unsafe medical care. Substance abuse that affects mental capacity and reasoning are the causes for not accepting and/or dismissing a student in order to protect patients. Students found to be using illegal or illicit drugs will be dismissed for unprofessional behavior. Any evidence of addiction to prescription, illicit, or illegal drugs will be considered a risk to patients and the student will be required to be evaluated immediately and be subject to any or all of the following: suspension, dismissal, or unplanned leave for treatment at the discretion of the Campus Dean. The college maintains the right to convene an Individual Assessment Committee to determine whether the applicant or student meets these technical standards and/or poses a potential danger to self or others. Such an evaluation may require an independent forensic evaluation of the student by a psychiatrist and other psychological health providers. Mental health capacity must be such that an emotional support animal is not needed in order to participate in the curriculum or provide medical care. VI. Professional and Ethical Attributes Students must demonstrate the capacity to make professional and ethical decisions expected of a medical professional at all times to be successful in the curriculum and to effectively and safely care for patients. This requires students to demonstrate careful and safe decision making at all times, to be free from addiction, to discriminate between legal and illegal behaviors, to make moral rather than immoral decisions, to make ethical rather than unethical decisions, and to demonstrate professional rather than unprofessional behaviors. Professional and ethical attributes are those expected of a physician by all of society and are generally required by state medical licensing boards. These attributes are those that instill a sense of trust by patients in the medical community. Students who perform in an unethical or unprofessional manner are subject to dismissal. VII. Physical Health and Chronic Disease Students must be in reasonable health to complete the physical requirements of the curriculum, including the physical requirements required to participate in the anatomy laboratory, microbiology laboratory, osteopathic manipulative medicine laboratories, simulation laboratories, in all patient care environments, and other

32