Latest news with #medicalstudents
Medscape
15 hours ago
- Health
- Medscape
Do Medical Students With Disabilities Face Discrimination?
TOPLINE: Disability-based discrimination was reported by 12.4% of medical students with disabilities in the US, with the highest rates being reported by those with chronic illnesses and multiple disabilities. Clinical clerkship faculty and residents were frequently cited as sources of discrimination. METHODOLOGY: Researchers analyzed data from the 2024 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Graduation Questionnaire, completed by 80% of graduates, to understand the prevalence and sources of disability-based discrimination among 1800 students with disabilities. Disability status was self-reported and categorized as nondisabled, learning disabilities, psychological issues, motor or sensory disabilities, chronic illness, multiple types, and other. The questionnaire assessed the sources and frequency of discrimination on the basis of experiences such as being denied opportunities for training, receiving poorer evaluations, and facing offensive remarks related to disabilities. Multiple experiences of discrimination were coded as two or more types, such as denied opportunities and offensive remarks. TAKEAWAY: Overall, 12.4% of students with disabilities reported experiencing discrimination, with those having chronic illnesses, motor or sensory disabilities, and multiple disabilities reporting the highest rates of discrimination (P < .001 for all). Clinical clerkship faculty and residents were the most frequently cited sources of discrimination, affecting evaluations (74.8% and 36.5%, respectively) and opportunities (58.9% and 28.9%, respectively). The most commonly cited sources of offensive remarks were clinical clerkship faculty (51.6%), residents (30.6%), and students (19.8%). IN PRACTICE: 'To address these issues, programs should foster an inclusive clinical educational culture, where students are empowered to report discrimination without fear of retaliation, train faculty and residents on disability awareness and inclusive teaching strategies, and learning happens in universally designed settings,' the authors of the study wrote. 'Ensuring that faculty understand the concept and goals of reasonable accommodations is important; resources offered by the AAMC can assist in these efforts. Involving medical students and faculty with disabilities and chronic disease in these efforts is essential and underscores the value of disability representation in medicine,' experts wrote in an invited commentary. SOURCE: The study was led by Mytien Nguyen, MS, of the Department of Immunobiology at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. It was published online on July 28, 2025, in JAMA Internal Medicine. LIMITATIONS: The self-reported and cross-sectional data may have led to an underestimation of how often discrimination occurred and uncertainty about the exact causes of discriminatory experiences. DISCLOSURES: This work was supported by grants from the Ford Foundation; the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences; and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. One author reported receiving personal fees from Docs With Disabilities, and two authors reported receiving grants from the National Institutes of Health during the conduct of the study. This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
1 dead, suspect at large in shooting at University of New Mexico housing complex
At least one person is dead and another is injured after a shooting July 25 at a student housing complex at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the university said. University police said the shooter remains at large "and may still be on campus." "Responding officers discovered two individuals had been shot. One victim is deceased, and the other sustained non-life-threatening injuries," school police said. Students are sheltering in place. The university closed its central campus 'out of an abundance of caution,' it said. Multiple law enforcement agencies are on the scene and investigating. About 23,000 students attend the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque during the school year. The University's medical school was set to host a "White Coat Ceremony," a rite of passage for incoming medical students, at 9 a.m. July 25. A ticketing site showed the festivities have been canceled. (This is a developing story and will be updated.) This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: University of New Mexico student housing shooting: At least 1 dead
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The World's Richest Woman Has Opened a Medical School
Aerial overview of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine Credit - Timothy Hursley—Courtesy of Alice L. Walton School of Medicine On July 14, 48 students walked through the doors of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark. to become its inaugural class. Some came from neighboring cities, others from urban centers in Michigan and New York. Almost all had a choice in where they could become doctors but took a chance on the new school because of its unique approach to rethinking medical education. Named after its founder—the world's richest woman and an heir to the Walmart fortune—the school will train students over the next four years in a radically different way from the method most traditional medical schools use. And that's the point. Instead of drilling young physicians to chase symptom after symptom and perform test after test, Alice Walton wants her school's graduates to keep patients healthy by practicing something that most doctors today don't prioritize: preventive medicine and whole-health principles, which involve caring for (and not just treating) the entire person and all of the factors—from their mental health to their living conditions and lifestyle choices—that contribute to wellbeing. Those aren't new ideas, of course, but traditional medicine has only paid lip service to them. Experts have noted that while as much as 80% of medical education focuses on biology, about 60% of premature deaths are due to behavioral factors including lifestyle habits like diet, exercise, and smoking. 'I applied to 34 schools, and nowhere else are they doing this,' says Ellie Andrew-Vaughn, who arrived in Bentonville from Ann Arbor, Mich. 'I heard whispers about the school back in December 2021,' says Rebecca Wilson, who grew up in nearby Cave Springs and plans to remain in Arkansas to improve the health care there. 'Hearing how revolutionary their outlook on medicine was, and how it was a part of the DNA and not something adapted to the curriculum like some of the other schools—that was unique.' Read More: The Race to Explain Why More Young Adults Are Getting Cancer Visually, the school lives up to its acronym: AWSOM. The building, with soaring glass walls, is located on Walton family property and includes not just a wellness studio and gym, but a rooftop park, healing gardens where students can study, growing gardens for producing healthy foods, and a reflection pond. A path from the rooftop park leads through the Ozark forest directly to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which Walton built in 2011, as a reminder to the students about the link between healing, art, science, and humanity. Walton is covering tuition for the first five graduating classes. For her investment, Walton anticipates that some of the newly minted doctors will bring what they learn to the local community—specifically to underserved areas in Arkansas, Walton's home state. But her grander vision is for the model she creates to be mirrored at other medical schools across the country—so that what started in northwest Arkansas can spread to other regions with few health resources. Creating a new medical school in 2025 isn't an easy or obvious project, especially when the mission is to redesign medical education. 'My brother Jim said, 'Oh, that's a big undertaking, Alice.' I think my big brother was trying to protect me from myself,' she says with a smile. But Walton's firsthand experience as a patient set her on this path. After a serious car accident in the 1980s, she battled a bone infection, multiple surgeries, and lingering health issues for more than a decade. Walton grew convinced that 'our health care system is broken' and that someone needed to catalyze change. A broken system Medicine in the U.S. has long incentivized doctors to respond to people's symptoms—by ordering many rounds of tests and procedures, to name two cost-driving examples—rather than trying to prevent them in the first place. The doctor-patient conversations that should be at the heart of effective medical care are rare today, and patients are saddled with exorbitant fees that haven't always contributed to better health outcomes. The system also contributes to care deserts in rural America. Arkansas, in particular, ranks 48th out of the 50 states in the share of adults in fair or poor health. The state also has the highest maternal death and teen birth rates in the U.S. Where do you start if you want to recreate health care from scratch? There isn't a single solution, and any strategy needs to account for not just how doctors are trained and practice medicine, but also the financial incentives that currently drive those practices. In 2019, Walton founded the Heartland Whole Health Institute, located steps from the new medical school, which focuses on research, health advocacy, and education about the policies and financial systems necessary to advance preventive care. With AWSOM, she is turning her attention to finding a better way to train the people who will populate that system: future doctors. 'They will get all the science and disease knowledge they need to manage the 'sick-care' side of things,' Walton says. But 'I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors the ability to focus on how to keep their patients healthy.' That includes integrating emerging technologies like AI and digital health innovations that can help people track and manage health conditions like diabetes, obesity, and blood pressure. 'We are in a huge transition point right now in terms of technology,' she says. 'I'm really excited about the potential.' An art-infused curriculum Her vision for an innovative curriculum at the medical school began taking shape after a meeting with Dr. Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine and a fellow Arkansan, who became AWSOM's chair of the board of directors. (AWSOM also has a formal collaboration with Stanford, in which half a dozen of the university's faculty will teach incoming students and mentor both students and faculty.) To helm the school, Walton chose Dr. Sharmila Makhija, a gynecologic cancer surgeon from Alabama who shared Walton's commitment to whole-health principles and improving the quality of health care in the South. 'The foundation [of the curriculum] is traditional medicine but enhanced with the humanities and the arts to improve the delivery of care—so we improve on how we [act] with patients and how we partner with patients,' says Makhija. Read More: The Surprising Reason Rural Hospitals Are Closing Walton's personal passion for art informed and infused the new school's humanities-based approach. Introduced to watercolors by her mother, she made her first art purchase—a print of Picasso's Blue Nude—as a child from her father's Walton's 5 & 10 in Bentonville. As an adult, she collected key pieces of American art spanning five centuries, then founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville to share what is now a collection of more than 3,500 pieces with the community, for free. 'Art was a foreign thing here,' she says. 'Museums weren't a part of our life.' But when the museum opened in 2011, it resonated, becoming a center for social events. Crystal Bridges and AWSOM are physically attached for a reason. An integral part of the medical school curriculum involves exposure to and appreciation for the lessons that healers can learn from art. 'In the time I was going in and out of hospitals, I had to grab whatever I could find to keep my sanity,' Walton says of how painting watercolors and reading art books helped in her recovery. 'I do believe the art world and the health care world need to collide more, and both will benefit from it.' All students will take a course, for example, that involves drawing one another and studying pieces in the museum. The hope is to sharpen their skills of observation and empathy. 'It sounds basic, but you start to talk about, 'What did it feel like to observe someone closely, or how did it feel to be seen?'' says Makhija. 'It's not a usual way in the medical world to think and talk, so it's a different language, but that's part of the goal: to help them understand different modes of speaking, understanding, and relating to others.' On a wintry January day, Walton walks through the museum's installation and stops at one of her favorites: a gigantic depiction of the opening words of the U.S. Constitution, 'We the People.' The original calligraphy is recreated with thousands of shoelaces in different colors and fabrics. On the opposite wall, Walton chose to place an array of portraits of 'who we are as people,' she says, ranging from one of George Washington painted by Charles Willson Peale in the early 1780s to a digital installation featuring a fracking worker from North Dakota—'two of my boyfriends George and Johnny,' as Walton describes them. The series also includes the first known portrait of an American, painted in Colonial times, and a portrait of a Black woman painted after the Ferguson riots. 'We don't only go by time periods,' she says of the way the pieces in the museum are displayed. 'Some of the fun is putting George and Johnny together.' The installation spans pieces from all time periods, all races, and all walks of life—a theme she infuses in the medical school as well. 'Health care is the most inequitable,' she says. 'A lot of that is because we don't have doctors and health-care providers who look like a lot of people. It is a big issue, and it is a huge piece of the problem in why people don't get health care.' Read More: How Health Insurance Monopolies Affect Your Care Walton believes that every piece should be displayed and enjoyed by the public, not tucked away in storage. So in 2017, she created the Art Bridges program, a collaboration with more than 250 smaller museums around the country that essentially extends the available wall space for pieces by rotating works constantly. That same focus on putting the community first infuses the training that the new medical students receive so that they never lose sight of why they became physicians: to serve the patients that need them the most. To reiterate their broader role in society as healers, all of the new students started community service work on their third day on campus. 'We expect the students, the faculty, everybody to be of service to the community,' says Makhija. 'Wherever they go to work, they've got to understand who they are serving.' Doctors of the future About 2,000 students applied to the school's 48 spots, and many who were chosen share an interest in bringing health care to underserved regions, particularly Arkansas. One is Emily Bunch, who grew up in Little Rock and was drawn to the school's focus on nutrition education, which traditional medical schools tend to gloss over. While the medical school accreditation organization recommends that curriculums devote at least 25 hours of instruction to nutrition, most schools average about 20 hours, in some cases only as electives. AWSOM's curriculum currently includes more than 50 hours of nutrition-related training, including culinary classes. Doctors-to-be will spend class time gardening and at a teaching farm, learning about the seasonality of fresh foods and how to cook them—then passing those lessons onto patients. 'There is a lack of understanding of nutrition and so much exposure to fast food,' Bunch says of her own struggles with weight and finding healthy food options growing up. 'It wasn't until a doctor talked to me about nutrition in a whole-health way that I understood the mental and psychological aspects of weight, and that empowered me to finally take control of my health.' 'It's a big problem in Arkansas and a big part of the reason I wanted to become a doctor—to serve as a guide for other people,' Bunch says. 'Arkansas desperately needs more whole-health and preventive care.' Read More: 10 Questions You Should Always Ask at Doctors' Appointments As part of their training, students will also have the opportunity to design parts of their curriculum through research projects and community service. The hope is that these will lead to novel ways of delivering care and improving health outcomes, especially for communities that current health care services don't reach. Safwan Sarker, from Brooklyn, is eager to find ways to improve home-based care by integrating high-tech tools like virtual reality and augmented reality for underserved populations. 'There aren't enough people researching these [strategies],' he says. 'So people dismiss them. But AWSOM is encouraging us to look at new systems and new ways to help populations like those in rural communities. If they aren't getting their medications on time, would a drone-based system work? Once we get the evidence-based framework for these novel methods, they could lead the way in terms of bridging gaps.' Both Walton and Makhija know their graduates will face challenges in bringing what they learn in the classroom to the real world. 'We can have whatever curriculum we want, but if they are thrown out in an environment where they are not practicing whole health, then it's for naught,' says Walton. The new graduates must be part of the solution to change that, she believes. AWSOM partnered with the local health system, Mercy, which will not only provide clinical exposure to the doctors-in-training but also implement some of the whole-patient approaches the school is hoping to introduce, including initially with a cardiac care center. There are signs this approach has appeal beyond the heartland. Already, Makhija says a few health systems have contacted her about AWSOM's whole-health focus, and Walton hopes the school will serve as a model of a new type of medical education. 'It's all about rethinking and re-envisioning what the education of the next generation of health care workers will be like,' says Makhija. 'Alice and I are very keen on creating a sustainable model of education, both in how we deliver the curriculum that can be replicated, as well as fiscally, so that other schools can use a similar model.' If successful, AWSOM could prove that medical school should, and can, be about more than just biology and anatomy. It can also be about what drives a person, and what feeds them—literally, figuratively, spiritually. Walton is delighted to watch the future of health care take root in the places where she played as a child, especially since the area desperately needs better health solutions. 'It's going to be really exciting and fun to see what happens,' she says. Contact us at letters@ Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Dr. Jeremy Saul Scholarship for Medical Students to Empower the Next Generation of Medical Trailblazers
Russellville, Arkansas--(Newsfile Corp. - July 18, 2025) - The Dr. Jeremy Saul Scholarship for Medical Students, a new national scholarship program, now accepts applications from undergraduate students aspiring to careers in healthcare. This one-time $1,000 award will be granted to a student whose vision and values reflect a commitment to service, innovation, and compassionate care. Dr. Jeremy Saul To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: The scholarship is open to students enrolled in accredited undergraduate institutions throughout the United States. By easing the financial pressures of higher education, the program encourages driven individuals to stay focused on their passion for medicine and their desire to positively impact the lives of others through healthcare. "As someone who has dedicated his life to patient-centered medicine, I understand the sacrifices and dedication it takes to pursue a medical path," said Dr. Saul. "This scholarship is my way of investing in the future of healthcare-by supporting students who demonstrate integrity, empathy, and a desire to make a difference." Who Can Apply Eligible applicants must be: Enrolled full-time or part-time at a recognized U.S.-based undergraduate college or university. Maintaining a minimum 3.0 GPA on a 4.0 scale. Planning to pursue a career in a healthcare or medical-related field. Actively involved in community service or extracurricular activities that highlight a commitment to helping others. Candidates are required to submit a compelling essay (500-800 words) in response to this prompt: "Describe a personal experience that ignited your interest in the medical field. How will you integrate compassion, innovation, and community service into your future as a healthcare provider, and what lasting contributions do you hope to make?" Important Dates & Submission Info Applications must be submitted via the official scholarship website by February 15, 2026. The recipient will be announced on March 15, 2026, and honored through the scholarship's website and official social media channels. Applicants are encouraged to begin preparing early and ensure that all required documents-including essays and academic records-are submitted before the deadline. Submissions will be judged on originality, relevance, and alignment with the scholarship's core values. How to Apply Students who meet the eligibility requirements and are ready to share their story can find complete application details at: For questions or assistance, contact: apply@ Contact Information:Spokesperson: Dr. Jeremy SaulOrganization: Dr. Jeremy Saul ScholarshipWebsite: apply@ To view the source version of this press release, please visit Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Medscape
18-07-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Harassed in Med School
Medical school is a fast-paced, high-pressure environment where students are expected to excel. As part of their training, they learn to navigate tense interactions with faculty, residents, peers, and patients. But what happens when those interactions cross a line and students feel harassed, mistreated, or humiliated? Nearly 40% of medical students reported experiencing harassment during med school, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC's) most recent survey of 2023-2024 graduates. The behaviors include being publicly humiliated or subjected to sexist, racist, or ethnically offensive remarks or names. In addition, almost 40% of graduates reported being publicly embarrassed. Clinical rotation faculty were cited as perpetrators of most of the negative behaviors in the survey. As the AAMC questionnaire shows, mistreatment continues to take place in medical schools despite policies that seek to curb it. Caroline Beit was 4 months pregnant when she entered the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, in the fall of 2024. From her first day until she gave birth to her daughter earlier this year, she claims she was verbally harassed by faculty and students about her choice to have a baby while attending medical school. She said that one professor told her class that pregnancy was a 'truly horrible disease.' Another initially referred to pregnancy as a 'disease state' before telling the class that their classmate could tell them all about pregnancy. 'The attention on my pregnancy from the entire class embarrassed me,' Beit told Medscape Medical News . In addition, Beit said she felt harassed by students, who asked if they could watch the birth. They commented on her changing body, inquired whether it was a planned pregnancy, and even suggested she have an abortion. She also said that fellow students told her that she should take an exam elsewhere in case she went into labor and distracted them. In response to Medscape Medical News' inquiries about the complaint, a Johns Hopkins University spokesperson said that the school protects student privacy under federal law and could not comment on individual cases or complaints. 'We have long-established policies in place that strictly prohibit discrimination and harassment,' read an emailed statement from a university spokesperson . 'We take all reports seriously and evaluate each one to take appropriate action. If any member of our community experiences or witnesses such behavior, we encourage them to contact the Office of Institutional Equity [OIE],' the statement read. 'The School of Medicine has additional resources to respond to student concerns and address a wide range of potential issues, and we are continually working to ensure that all of our students are treated with fairness and respect.' About Medscape Data Medscape continually surveys physicians and other medical professionals about key practice challenges and current issues, creating high-impact analyses. For example, a soon-to-be-published report on medical school stressors found that One quarter of fourth-year med students have been harassed or bullied by attendings or residents. 19% of med students reported bullying by fellow students. In addition, nearly 30% of students reported unwanted advances from patients, followed by such advances from peers. Among female students, the rate of unwanted advances from patients, 38%, was slightly higher, according to another Medscape report. Filing a Complaint Nathalie Feldman, MD, director of the Learning Environment at The Robert Larner, MD, College of Medicine at the University of Vermont (UVM), Burlington, Vermont, encourages students who believe they've been mistreated to file a report. She said that the bar is very low for reporting at their institution, so they will address anything that makes students feel uncomfortable. She also added that students have a QR barcode on the back of their name badges connecting them with forms to report concerns or unprofessional behavior. 'We try to decrease as many barriers to reporting as possible,' said Feldman, an associate professor in the medical school's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. Beit said that she filed informal complaints with Johns Hopkins' Office of Medical Student Affairs and formal complaints with the Mistreatment Incident and Learning Environment Surveillance (MILES) Committee, which promotes a safe and respectful learning environment for medical students. MILES must notify and file a complaint with the OIE, which oversees compliance with antidiscrimination and harassment policies. Beit added that MILES also changed her to a different professor's group. In response to the complaints, one professor sent a written apology to her group that he had erred and that 'it was wrong to classify pregnancy as a disease.' She doesn't believe the other complaint was resolved, nor that her complaints led to any significant institutional changes. She didn't file complaints against her fellow students. Why Misbehavior Occurs in Med School Beit is not alone in her claims of mistreatment in medical school. Among the findings of the AAMC's 2024 graduation questionnaire, about 20% of students reported being publicly humiliated, 13% subjected to offensive sexual remarks or names, and nearly 9% experiencing racially or ethnically offensive comments. The statistics have improved slightly since 2020, with more students knowing how to report mistreatment at their schools and reporting it, according to the survey. While most medical educators and staff are 'professional and well-meaning,' some abuse their power, said Tim Lacy, senior director of Student Learning Environment at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Chicago. 'Some people with poor intentions are opportunistic, taking advantage of sincere or naïve medical students.' Feldman believes that some contributing factors to mistreatment, harassment, or public humiliation of medical students might relate to the hierarchal system of teaching hospitals and to generational differences in communication styles between students and faculty or other supervising clinicians that can cause tension, especially in the 'high-stakes, high-acuity' environment of patient care. Feldman added that often the harassing or bullying behavior isn't intentional but rather committed by individuals who were taught with those same public humiliation techniques and may be unfamiliar with how language and training have evolved. Halting Harassment The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), an accrediting body for educational programs at schools of medicine, requires medical schools to set standards for student mistreatment, among other qualifications for accreditation. Medical schools are expected to develop written policies that define mistreatment, have mechanisms in place for prompt responses to complaints, and support educational activities that prevent mistreatment, according to the current LCME standards. The LCME standards include general guidelines for creating respectful learning environments and relationships, but ultimately, schools have flexibility in how they apply the principles, so policies differ by school, said Geoffrey Young, AAMC senior director for the Transforming the Health Care Workforce unit. For instance, the University of Illinois College of Medicine has a code of professional conduct for teacher-student relationships and standards for reporting student mistreatment in its Positive Learning Environment Policy. Per the policy, 'Publicly humiliating, physically harming, exploiting, and/or subjecting an individual to unwanted sexual advances are all examples of mistreatment.' Schools must also ensure students understand how to report mistreatment and that 'any violations can be registered and investigated without fear of retaliation.' Among the reasons graduates do not report such incidents are a belief that the school will not act and fear of reprisal. 'Even though there's a policy and a reporting process, we still know there's underreporting because of fear of retribution and retaliation. It's my job to make sure students feel confident and reassure them by reporting and representing their best interests,' Lacy said. He advises students that filing a complaint might affect their career options. If they want to proceed, he cautions students to file reports well before grades are released so the complaint doesn't appear to result from grading. Some students may even delay complaints until after they graduate to avoid repercussions, Lacy said. Beit admitted that she was afraid of repercussions and still is. 'I worry that, given that I have 3 years left, that I will continue to be harassed for having a child while in medical school.' When a student comes to Lacy with concerns, he clarifies whether they want to consult with him confidentially or report an issue. He told Medscape Medical News that most students want a sounding board. The conversation may occur in person, through video conferencing, or via email. Lacy said he tries to respond to the initial report within a day or two, but a complete institutional response to the situation can vary from a day to several weeks. Most of the reports of abuse are from third-year medical students, he added. 'As the year progresses, they come to realize a range of normal clinical behaviors and begin to be comfortable reporting events outside of that range.' In some cases, the school can resolve the situation without reporting an incident. Lacy cited a recent student complaint he received through email, prompting him to speak with the education dean and clerkship director to resolve the issue. 'I consult with whoever has the power to change the situation.' Feldman explained that the tiered resolution process at The Robert Larner, MD, College of Medicine at the UVM starts with an informal dialogue and, if necessary, escalates to a formal investigation. Faculty members may be removed from teaching activities until they complete coaching or a remediation program. If that doesn't prevent recurrence, the incident might be documented in their professional record, leading to other more severe disciplinary actions, such as decreased responsibilities or losing their job. However, Feldman said, 'That's extremely rare, but it's possible.' At the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado, several policies and processes help protect students from unprofessional behavior, including a Teacher-Learner Agreement and a Mistreatment Policy. The latter refers students who witness such behavior to the Office of Faculty Relations, which can provide support and help them report incidents. The office directs students whose concerns involve discrimination, sexual misconduct, or harassment to the CU Office of Equity. 'We will talk the student through the process and let them know what to expect,' said Abigail Lara, MD, assistant dean for faculty relations. Resolution procedures run the gamut from potential sanctions against staff who violate the policy — a warning, a written letter of reprimand, or the employee's firing. Other sanctions may include mandatory training, demotion, change in job responsibilities, reduced salary, ineligibility for merit increases, or denying access to all or a portion of the university's property. Protecting Students Two years ago, the University of Colorado School of Medicine launched an antimistreatment effort that analyzed their students' reports of negative behaviors on the AAMC graduation questionnaire surveys from 2019 to 2023. The school conducted its own survey at the end of the clinical rotation period and held focus groups with students, Lara added. She said the campaign decreased experiences of bullying and mistreatment. In addition, if a student reports mistreatment on the survey, it automatically flags an administrator to reach out to the student to see if they want to discuss the issue further. UVM's medical school saw a 'dramatic decrease' in student mistreatment reports from the operating room (OR) when students were better trained to maintain a sterile field, a concern of OR nurses, Feldman said. 'New students were coming into the operating room, and the nurses would bark at them if they got too close to the table. Students reported it as mistreatment to us. So, we created a shadowing [opportunity] where students could follow a patient care associate to learn how to keep a sterile field,' she said. 'Then we went back to the perioperative staff, the nurses where the mistreatment was coming from, and they said the students were so much better prepared. We involved them in training our students, and they were empowered to then teach them the right way to keep a sterile field.' Feldman added that involving the students in the resolution process also can help ease tension. They can also refer students to counseling and psychiatry services to help them cope with the aftermath of an incident. Despite policies and methods for resolving conflicts, Beit believes med schools like hers that value diversity of experiences in their incoming classes should better protect those who don't fit the mold of the traditional student. 'Policies technically prevent discrimination and harassment. In practice, they are not doing enough to protect students,' she said. She understands the risks she took bringing attention to a perceived injustice. But she didn't think the school culture would change unless she spoke up. If medical students feel they've been bullied or harassed, Lacy recommends: Keep a recurring journal or send an email to yourself with the details of an incident. Take notes while you can remember the conversations and specifics, especially if you're considering action in the future. Document the incident with evidence, such as screenshots of chats, in case they are deleted later. If you're unsure about reporting an incident, find a trusted staff member, faculty member, or student leader to consult. Report incidents sooner rather than later so concerns are taken seriously and can be investigated timely.
