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.
This month, AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Jacquelyn Nestor, a fifth-year MD/PhD student at Hofstra-Northwell School of Medicine, interviewed Allen Buchanan, PhD, about how we can safely explore cutting-edge biomedical enhancements.
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.