Dive Brief:

• A new study shows that 17% to 20% of medical students experience mistreatment during medical school, including public humiliation, physical harm, verbal abuse, and coercion.
• The report, to appear in the May issue of the Academic Medicine journal, found that resident physicians are the most frequent sources of abuse.
• Among specialties, mistreatment was most frequent for students in surgery clerkships, reported by 36% of respondents, followed by obstetrics-gynecology at 25% and internal medicine at 16%.

Dive Insight:

The report raises the question of whether being the victim of mistreatment or observing unprofessional conduct by superiors leads to an erosion in empathy and ethics in medical students and resident physicians. It also hypothesizes that resident physicians may be abusive because they were recent victims, as medical students. The report analyzed responses to the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Medical School Graduation Questionnaire. Academic Medicine journal is publishing several related articles on medical student abuse.