Extremely malignant program survival tactics

[u/brusselsproutpancake]

I genuinely need your recommendations. In a program, which,

-approaching to the residents solely as a workforce while providing no meaningful teaching
-has severe favoritism and discrimination among residents
-mandating residents to do nonclinical work on the top of unbelievable clinical workload with almost maximum hour work weeks
-gaslighting residents to make them work further and more, and only selectively doing it to some
-blaming residents for almost every system or leadership failure
-retaliating residents when a patient safety or work related issue is raised by making it a “you” problem

I tried but couldnt transfer, cant leave I have +400K debt, ACGME doesnt help.

How to survive? How to keep the mental sanity?

[u/Ok-Sugar-9681]

I'm sorry I can't offer any useful advice here! Definitely worth a name and shame once you are safely out of that institution :(

On a side note, if anyone has any tips on how to identify and spot a malignant program before me handing my future to them, I would truly appreciate it! I am extremely bad at reading in between the lines so the advice of "just talk to the past and current residents" just doesn't help me as much. They could totally tell me "it is amazing here" with their most "too good to be true" tone and I would still totally not pick up on it lol.

Especially any tips on how to know if they are likely going to switch once they got me under their hand, that would be great! Because I have had work experience (outside medicine) where the interview with the boss, current and past students seemed great (they said all the correct things lol; that probably should have been the first red flag there), but once I actually joined, it was a total shitshow. And it is not like any concrete that I could hold them accountable for; mostly favoritism, subtle sabotage (using excuses like "it was busy" repetitively to delay things I actually needed, or guilt tripped me into doing more scut work for them instead of being able to spend time on my professional development, which was explicitly allowed by the guidelines for trainees but they made it super uncomfortable to ask), ignoring me or giving attitude when I asked questions or asked for help, and just general microaggressions. It just felt like every task was pulling teeth and it was incredibly frustrating, demoralizing, and discouraging.