This month, theme issue editor Ajay Major, a medical student at Albany Medical College, interviewed Dr. Pauline Chen about the problem of bullying in medical education.

Is there a legacy of student mistreatment in medical training?

Managing mistreatment of medical students and others in the learning environment.

Asymmetry in knowledge and power between (1) physicians and patients and (2) physician educators and their students creates a climate for possible abuse in both sets of relationships.

A mandatory faculty course on dyslexia is recommended to prevent bias against and misunderstanding of medical students who have this condition.

Physicians need to help surrogate decision makers to make treatment and end-of-life decisions for those with severe neurological damage by proving a realistic prognosis and maintain strong lines of communication.

By not reporting abusive faculty behavior, a student places his or her grade over the larger good of promoting human dignity.

Medical school faculty have a nonnegotiable duty to report students whose professional behavior falls seriously short of the mark. If they refrain from fulfilling this duty for fear of retaliation, the antiharassment pendulum has truly swung too far.

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.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics' opinion on sexual harassment of medical students and residents.