Equating conscience with clinical judgment challenges the way that ethics is marginalized in medical education. Ethics is simply an account of what good medical practice looks like in particular situations.
The causes of many health behaviors are deeply rooted in our culture, and using a counseling model that assumes individual control and responsibility for these behaviors can cause patients to feel hectored instead of helped.
It is the clerkship director's role to advise students labeled gunners when their behavior becomes a problem, but changes in the larger system might help to prevent this behavior from occurring in the first place.
Role-playing exercises, which help participants understand the experience of being harassed, can be helpful in addressing mistreatment in medical education.
The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA formed the Gender and Power Abuse Committee in 1995 to address mistreatment of medical students, residents, and junior faculty.