Los Angeles Times' Soumya Karlamangla profiled the journey of Adam Litwin, MD, who recently passed his final board exam to become a physician two decades after doing jail time for impersonating a physician at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Dr. Litwin graduated last year from the St. James School of Medicine on Bonaire, an island in the Caribbean, and passed the board exams, according to the report. He completed some of his rotations at hospitals in Cook County, Ill. Dr. Litwin did not get accepted into a residency program this year but plans to reapply.
The journey to a medical degree was more momentous for Dr. Litwin than for most. In 2001, after spending six months pretending to be a resident at UCLA, Dr. Litwin pleaded guilty to impersonating a physician, forging a prescription and stealing state property. He served two months in jail and went to more than the court-mandated six months of psychiatric counseling, according to the report.
Ultimately, he decided he still wanted to work with patients, so he enrolled in medical school in 2012.
"I have learned from my mistakes and that's why there's no chance that anything like that could or would ever happen again," Dr. Litwin told the LA Times.
Read the full profile here.
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