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.
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.
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.
Role-playing exercises, which help participants understand the experience of being harassed, can be helpful in addressing mistreatment in medical education.