Most Female Thoracic Surgeons Report Sexual Harassment on Job

SAN DIEGO — More than 80% of female thoracic surgeons said they’d been sexually harassed on the job, most commonly by their superiors, a new study finds.

Men reported sexual harassment to a much smaller extent, and they appeared to be less attuned to noticing it at work, DuyKhanh Ceppa, MD, of the Indiana University School of Medicine, reported at the annual meeting of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

“Sexual harassment is present in the field. While it is a sensitive topic, we cannot put our head in the sand and deny it,” said Ceppa in an interview. “The point is to prevent sexual harassment moving forward. We cannot thrive as a discipline if sexual harassment is pervasive in our field.”

The idea for the research was born last year at the annual STS meeting amid the beginnings of the #MeToo movement, Ceppa said. “The topic was discussed at the STS board of directors meeting, and a small task force was formed to send out a survey on the topic.”

A total of 790 people in the thoracic field responded to the survey, including attendings (82%), trainees (14%), and non-physicians (4%). Three-quarters of the respondents were male.

Of the female surgeons, 81% said they’d been sexually harassed compared to 46% of men (P<0.001). Trainees also reported sexual harassment (90% of women vs 32% of men male, P<0.001).

Gender harassment — harassment based on gender that’s not sexual — was most common among women (74% reported experiencing it), followed by unwanted sexual attention (48%) and sexual coercion (19%).

“Data on all other subspecialties is only slowly coming out now, but to date these rates are the highest that we have seen reported in the medical field,” Ceppa said.

Among men, the percentages who reported these kinds of harassment were 43%, 15%, and 2%, respectively.

Among women, the most common perpetrators were direct supervisors. Among men, they were ancillary staff — nurses and clinic and office staff.

There was a wide gap in perceptions among those surveyed that they had witnessed sexual harassment of a colleague: 75% of female surgeons said they had compared to just 51% of male surgeons. In about half of the cases, men and women who said they witnessed harassment reported that it didn’t spur them to take any action, such as reporting the incident to a supervisor or warning others.

“We need to empower and encourage surgeons to intervene,” Ceppa said. “We need to respectfully police each other.”

The survey didn’t ask about the genders of harassers.

In an interview, Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, who studies sexual harassment in medicine, said the rates of harassment in the survey are “indeed high” compared to other findings.

But they also reflect the fact that previous studies were not as sensitive, said Jagsi, director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“Rates may also reflect a greater sensitivity to recognizing unwanted behaviors in the post-#MeToo world,” she said.

What’s the solution? “To prevent sexual harassment, there must be full participation of women throughout a profession, at all levels, not just in numbers but sharing equally in the power and authority,” she said.