Abstract
Mistreatment of students has been historically documented as common in U.S. medical schools, but graduate questionnaire (GQ) data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) displays high numbers of students who have experienced mistreatment but not reported the incident. There are many reasons within the literature as to why students do not report their experiences, including fear of academic repercussion or a misunderstanding of what constitutes as mistreatment. Our institution found through GQ data that there was a shortcoming in understanding policies and knowledge of procedures associated with mistreatment, and student focus group responses showed that many students were not confident that their reports would receive follow-up on the part of the institution. These factors led to the formation of a task force to investigate our school’s workflow once a report of concern for mistreatment is received and examine measures to increase transparency to the student body that their reports are acted upon. We took measures to place a greater emphasis on communication with students during the mistreatment report workflow, as well as releasing name-blinded data within our weekly student communication emails regarding reports that had been processed and resolved. The results after one year of these efforts saw our GQ percentile data jump from falling between the 10th to 25th percentile to the 90th percentile for student awareness of mistreatment policies and from between the 25th to 50th percentile to between the 75th to 90th percentile for student knowledge of mistreatment procedures. These jumps in GQ figures provide insight for policy changes that could benefit other institutions struggling with building a safe environment for students to confidently report incidents of mistreatment with knowledge that their concerns are important and acted upon.