Retheorizing sexual harassment in medical education: women students' perceptions at five U.S. medical schools.
BACKGROUND
The literature consistently reports that sexual harassment occurs with regularity in medical education, mostly in clinical settings, and most of it goes unreported. Reasons for nonreporting include the fear of retaliation, a reluctance to be viewed as a victim, a fear that one is being "too sensitive," and the belief that nothing will be done.


OBJECTIVE
We wanted to examine with greater concentration the stories women students tell about sexual harassment, including what they count as sexual harassment, for more or different clues to their persistent nonreporting.


METHODS
We used focus groups to interview 30 women students at 5 U.S. medical schools. We used systematic inductive guidelines to analyze the transcribed data, linking to and building new theoretical frameworks to provide an interpretive understanding of the lived experiences of the women in our study.


RESULTS
Consistent with previous literature, most of the students interviewed had either witnessed or observed sexual harassment. We selected 2 theoretical lenses heretofore not used to explain responses to sexual harassment: 3rd-wave feminist theory to think about how current women students conceive sexual harassment and personality theory to explain beliefs about nonreporting.


CONCLUSIONS
Medical educators need new ways to understand how contemporary women students define and respond to sexual harassment.
Wear
Delese
D
Behavioral Sciences, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, Rootstown, Ohio 44272, USA. dw@neoucom.edu
Aultman
Julie M
JM
Borges
Nicole J
NJ
D000739:Anecdotes as Topic; D003469:Culture; D004501:Education, Medical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D012577:Schools, Medical; D017406:Sexual Harassment / Q000523:psychology*; D012938:Social Perception; D013337:Students, Medical; D014481:United States