Bullying and harassment amongst surgeons

Reported widely in the media this week has been the release of the Draft report to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons on discrimination, bullying and sexual harassment, which presents the findings from five major pieces of work commissioned by the Expert Advisory Group in 2015, all of which are published on the College website. The research found that across all surgical specialties senior surgeons and surgical consultants were the primary source of these problems:

• 54% of trainees and 45% of Fellows less than 10 years post-fellowship report being subjected to bullying
• 71% of hospitals reported discrimination, bullying or sexual harassment in their hospital in the last five years, with bullying the most frequently reported issue
• 39% of Fellows, trainees and international medical graduates report bullying, 18% report discrimination, 19% report workplace harassment and 7% sexual harassment 

One opinion piece subsequently published in The Conversation is by Kimberley Ivory from the University of Sydney: Surgeons take a scalpel to their own toxic culture.  It provides some revealing insights and context for the discussion.