Preparing Residents to Respond to Incidences of Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment: An Interactive Workshop

OBJECTIVES: Gender discrimination and sexual harassment are common in academic medicine. There are limited data on how to prepare medical trainees to respond to these incidents. The objective of this work was to understand the experience of residents with sexual harassment and to evaluate the impact of a low-cost educational intervention to better prepare residents to respond to incidents of gender discrimination and sexual harassment. METHODS: We adapted a national faculty development workshop to be given to Internal Medicine residents. The workshop had three components: an introduction to the problem of sexual harassment, cases for guided practice, and review of Title IX. The workshop was presented to residents during protected academic time and assessed with pre-/post- surveys. After the workshop, residents were more likely to use active responses, including express discomfort (15.0% vs 51.0%), express a preference (15.0% vs 53.1%), and debrief (13.3% vs 63.3%) and less likely to ignore the incident (56.7% vs 34.7%). CONCLUSIONS: This workshop offers one potential solution by better preparing residents to actively respond to incidents of gender discrimination and sexual harassment.