Sexual Harassment And Medical School: It’s Not Okay.

In Australia, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) is in damage control. A leading vascular surgeon has come out and stated that female surgeons should endure sexual harassment in order to protect their careers. A junior doctor in Melbourne has spoken up and described the harassment she’s faced by being a talented but female registrar. One of my idols has written a piece about the lack of female specialists in Australia.

Unfortunately, this issue isn’t confined to the workplace.

About halfway through medical school, we started doing short cases. This is one of the key assessments medical students face, and involves performing an eight-minute examination of a patient, followed by a summary of the key signs and list of differential diagnoses.

Naturally, my colleagues and I, new to the wards, were petrified.

We went to every tutorial on performing examinations, formed study groups, did trial run after trial run. After ward rounds, between clinics, we were practicing listening to heart sounds and percussing lung bases on one another.

One day, we were examining the respiratory system. I was the patient, and a fellow med student was examining me, and another was acting as the assessor.

He had forgotten to examine my chest. The medical student, providing feedback, mentioned this.

“How could I have forgotten those beautiful breasts?” He said, staring at my chest, pretending to squeeze them with his hands.

We just sat in silence. We didn’t tell him off. We didn’t say that such language was inappropriate.

I wish I could say that I’d spoken up and given him a piece of my mind. But I didn’t.

It took more of the same and the prompting of a friend to tell someone. I was scared. I felt dirty. I felt that I was blowing things out of proportion, making mountains out of molehills. I didn’t want to ruin his medical career… or mine.

I did speak up. I was supported by the hospital and made to feel safe within hospital grounds.

But outside of the wards, I was made to feel like the perpetrator. I was forced to see the person that had made me feel like an object. I was made to attend mediations with this person, despite my desire not to, wanting to move on with my life. A black mark was recorded against my name, as if to say that ‘this woman is a troublemaker’. I was forced to rehash this incident to other clinical deans, encouraging that voice in my head that reprimanded me for speaking up.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident, and I know that I’m not the only female medical student out there who has gone through this. I know of women who have gone through much worse, and it’s not acceptable. Every medical student, regardless of their gender, should be allowed to feel safe in the presence of their peers. This culture of misogyny begins young. We need to educate students on what acceptable behaviour is, and that the gender of a medical student has no bearing on their ability. We need to cultivate an environment where women are supported to speak up. We need to change.

I was sexually harassed in medical school, and that’s not okay.

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