Student Assessment Recusal Policy

Purpose

To ensure that any faculty member who provides medical or psychiatric/behavioral care to a medical student has no involvement in the assessment or promotion of the medical student who is receiving those services.

Scope

School/College/Department Policy

Definitions

The relationship between a student and a faculty member who is evaluating or assessing that student is one that creates a power dynamic, and one that can be at risk for conflicting interests. In order to prevent that scenario, this policy to require faculty recusal in certain situations so as to avoid conflict of interest.

Policy

Any faculty who is providing medical or psychiatric/behavioral care to a medical student must recuse him or herself from contributing to that medical student’s summative assessment, final grade, and/or promotion decisions in any element of the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall (SOM) curriculum. Medical student privacy is to be preserved at all times.

The faculty physician and the medical student are advised to immediately contact the appropriate clerkship/course director and/or Dean for Student Affairs and Well-being should the potential for this conflict of interest arises.

All student summative evaluation forms will include a required field where faculty must attest that to the best of their knowledge they are not the treating physician for medical or psychiatric/behavioral care for the student being evaluated.

Responsible Offices

Medical Education

Approval

Approved by the Office of Medical Education.

Effective Date

August 2, 2018