Hey guys; I know that this is going to sound cringe as fuck. But I am feeling very insecure about myself lately. For context I am a surgical resident in Latin America; I am PGY 2; so PGY 1's are under my command and I have a fuck ton more responsabilities (I filter patients in the ER and determine wether they are surgical candidates or not, I must know every single patient in the ER; and I must also take responsability for every hospitalizaed patient on the surgical floor, that's the job of the PGY 1, but since they just began their residency, I am therefore responsible for them)....

So for context, a patient died last shift, and he was recently operated because of a volvulus; according to the chief surgeon and my PGY 4 (the chief resident), he was just fine and was going to be discharged from the hopsital soon; howver my PGY1 and myself, we are sure this patient died because he had a bronchoaspiration event; we were notified a tad later than usual that the patient was having trouble breathing while he was having dinner, we arrived at the scene and performed CPR as soon as possible. However my chief resident and my chief surgeon are adamant that we are at fault, and they are both eyeing punishing us, all of the Surgical PGY 2 at my hospital... For starters such old practices are almost non existent anymore ( we have had our experience with HR from both our hospital and our university)... I am at a loss at what to do; supposedly tomorrow we will have a meeting with the chief surgeon and chief reisdent to decide our punishment; but I really don't know how to respond; I have sometimes a short temper, and I am afraid I might loose my cool :/ ; I was also thinking about bringing up the law; where it was very recently clearly stated that residents and attendings cannot punish other residents...

Please help :) I am very nervous right now; I just went to the gym early today just to clear my mind off, but I keep thinking about that :/