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Medical schools have been urged to protect students who face sexual assaults and “sinister” behaviour from senior doctors, who see them as easy targets, campaigners have warned.
Scores of students have come forward with stories of doctors, groping them and making inappropriate comments while they are being trained in hospitals, according to the campaign group Surviving in Scrubs.
The group, which aims to address sexual harassment facing medics in the NHS, has raised new concerns over vulnerable students who it says are facing abuse while on training placements in hospitals, It is urging NHS and university leaders to protect vulnerable trainees.
Becky Cox, a GP and founder of Survivors in Scrubs, told The Independent: “When they’re out on placement qualified doctors will make inappropriate comments about their appearance and more sinister behaviours, there was a student who was sexually assaulted in the car on the way to the placement.
“The power dynamic is much greater for students. By and large, this is senior doctors perpetrating this. Medical students are right at the bottom of the food chain, and we feel they are specifically targeted and because the perpetrators know there is very little the students can do to challenge the behaviour, they’re unlikely to raise a concern.”
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She said there were multiple examples of doctors assaulting students while leading practical training sessions.
In one example, a consultant was allegedly teaching a group of three female medical students how to do a cardiology examination and groped a student’s breast during the examination.
In a further example reported to the campaign group multiple female students said a male doctor was attending university parties to “drunk student medical trainees”.
Last year NHS England published a new charter NHS service on how to handle sexual assault concerns and how to better protect staff from this. Hospitals across the country were told by the NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard that they must sign up for this charter earlier this year.
Just three medical schools – at the universities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield – out of the 47 in England, have signed up to it.
In a letter to the Medical Schools Council, Survivors in Scrubs said: “Medical students are particularly vulnerable to sexual misconduct. Their lower professional status places them at the lower end of a power imbalance that facilitates sexual misconduct and discourages victims from reporting
“Survivors reported consultants targeting medical students, who felt unable to speak up about their mistreatment for fear of the impact on their future career.”
Anya Soin, a medical student who co-wrote the letter told The Independent: “One of the things that shocked me the most is how commonplace and sexism and misogyny are in the hospital setting...
“A challenge I have experienced on placement is misogynistic or sexist comments that just make you feel degraded. For example, I was sitting in the doctor’s office on the ward after being on the ward round. It was just myself, a male registrar and a female foundation doctor in the office. The male doctor was talking about what he’d been doing on the weekend, and then turned to me to ask if I had done anything nice.
“Before I could respond he said: ‘You look like a girl who’d like to party.’ The [other doctor] didn’t say anything. I just didn’t really know how to respond. It’s comments like that which are difficult to challenge, especially as a medical student.”
She said she felt stuck in the moment due to the power dynamic at the time and the fact she was at the bottom and had to spend the rest of the day on the ward made her feel like she couldn’t say anything.
“When things like that happen, who are we supposed to tell? Who do we go and speak to? It is so important that medical schools and trusts address these issues so that students feel safe and supported,” she said.
Dr Cox also raised the issue of students suffering harassment from their peers.
She said: “When medical students come into universities, they are being indoctrinated into these ‘boys clubs’ it’s very much going to encourage this from a young age.
“It’s really, challenging for students to raise a concern. Medical are incredibly variable, there’s no universal approach. If they’re out on clinical placement and it was a doctor at that NHS trust [who assaulted them], it becomes very grey over whose responsibility it is the medical school or trust.”
The Medical Schools Council was approached for comment.
