Being a doctor - gender related vulnerability, health and psychosocial work environment

Gender-related vulnerability, such as harassment and discrimination, occurs to a large extent in both academia and in the health care sector.

For medical students, doctoral students and doctors working at medical faculties, these contexts are linked, which creates a double vulnerability, not previously studied in Sweden.

From international research, we know that doctors and medical students report higher vulnerability than other academics.

Several factors that characterize the medical profession also contribute to increased vulnerability, including hierarchical and traditional organizations, face-to-face situations with patients and the perception that it is part of the doctor´s role to endure violations.

The exposure entails an increased risk of perceived dissatisfaction with work, lower job performance, burnout, mental and physical ill-health and the intention to leave the profession.

To date, however, there has been a lack of data regarding gender-related vulnerability in the Swedish higher education sector, which is currently collected through a national collaboration program under the leadership of Karolinska Institutet.

Through access to data from this data collection (N 125,000), this project will contribute to an in-depth statistical processing and analysis of the vulnerability that may occur in the intersection between academia and health care. The results will be analyzed with a gender theoretical approach.

The purpose of this project is to investigate the prevalence of gender-related vulnerability and harassment in relation to health and psychosocial work environment as well as other grounds for discrimination for medical students, doctoral students and doctors working at medical faculties.

Furthermore, the study will form the basis for the development of a checklist that can be used preventively to reduce the risk of vulnerability at the intersection between academia and health care.