Confession

(While I am trying to close this trivial story of student complaint, I receive the following email from the X. With his agreement, I showed the confession here.)

Sir,


I am X, one of the med 5 students that is directly involved in the Hospital Z incident.  Recently, I have heard rumors about the incident and I would like to provide my perspective.

Our group was waiting for the doctor in the conference room for briefing on the first day of Hospital Z attachment.  I was sitting beside one of my groupmates who sat in front of the computer, which was switched on already upon our arrival.  After a while, I decided to find out what he was doing.  He informed me that he found documents on the desktop, so I had a look at them as well.  I scrolled through the documents and realized that they were some sort of notice or memo directed to Hospital Z, requesting them to help recruit cases for exam. It contained contacts of our professors in different sub-specialities should a possible candidate be found, and the ideal number of stations per system.

My groupmate wanted to take photos of them. At that time, I felt that obtaining these documents would not have jeopardized the fairness of the exam, so I did not stop him from taking pictures, nor did I take pictures of them myself.

Hypothetically, if the documents really did contain any information which I felt would have put me in any advantages in the exam, I would not have dared to look any further, because of value and the consequences of breaking rules.

In hindsight, I know I have made a mistake for scrolling through documents which did not belong to me. I have apologized to my groupmates for this incident at the meeting. Also would you kindly forward this message to the owner of those documents as well?  I have learnt my lesson from this incident, and I am sure I would be more capable of handling similar situations in the future.

Yours sincerely, et cetera.