Sexual harassment and bullying in UK surgery: no room for complacency

A 2014 General Medical Council survey of 50 000 junior doctors in the United Kingdom found that about 8% had experienced bullying, with no significant difference between the sexes.1 Thus such incidents would seem to be much less common than among the nearly 50% of Royal Australasian College of Surgeons fellows, trainees, and international medical graduates who have reported discrimination, bullying, or sexual harassment. Any bullying, though, even 8%, is unacceptable.

Why are conditions better for surgeons working in the UK than in Australia in this regard? Firstly, we have had training programmes for decades with a bureaucratic but intense schedule of scrutiny. Every trainer has to justify any failure of a trainee to progress. Australia’s training programme was introduced only in 2007, so most trainers there did not follow a structured training programme themselves, and trainees have not benefited from the same …