Why Gender-Based Bullying Is Normalized in Academic Medicine: Experiences and Perspectives of Women Physician Leaders

Abstract

Background: Bullying has been identified as a problem in the academic medicine. Bullying behaviors persist because organizational cultures have allowed them to become normalized. In academic medicine, women are more likely to be bullied than men. Our purpose was to explain why gender-based bullying persists in academic medicine and identify mitigation strategies. Methods: We interviewed senior faculty women physicians who graduated from the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine^® program. We asked participants about their experience with bullying and its consequence on their careers. We also asked about the types of culture they think perpetuates bullying and their thoughts on how best to mitigate bullying. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded using Averbuch's Cycle of Academic Bullying as a framework. Results: We sampled 30 women physician leaders for interviews from a pool of 96 volunteers who had screened positive for experiencing bullying. All 30 either experienced or witnessed bullying during their careers. Bullying behaviors included public humiliation, defamation, verbal disparagement, and social isolation. Subjects suffered numerous negative effects from bullying such as stress, burnout, depression, and having to leave the job. Participants believed bullying behaviors persisted due to hierarchical organizational cultures. Barriers to reporting and mitigation were thought to originate from lack of leadership combined with ineffective policies and reporting mechanisms. Conclusions: Dysfunctional hierarchies embedded in organizational cultures within academic medicine have contributed to the normalization of bullying. Committed leadership, focused on implementing comprehensive bullying prevention policies, is needed to promote an inclusive culture in which everyone feels that they belong.

Keywords: bias; bullying; harassment; hierarchy.