PURPOSE
Data from the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) graduate
questionnaire (GQ) showed that there was a shortcoming in understanding
policies and knowledge of procedures associated with mistreatment at our
institution. Further, student focus group responses also indicated 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.
METHODS
The task force 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.
RESULTS
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.
CONCLUSION
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.