Publications for the week of December 16th

· “Prevalence of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination among resident physicians: a systematic review and meta-analysis” reports the overall pooled prevalence of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination was 64.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 51.0-77.1).

· Brocklebank and Jowsey have contributed another image to the CMEJ: “Interprofessional education or silo education?”

· “Application rates to surgical residency programs in Canada” describes declining numbers of applications to general, orthopedic, plastic, otolaryngology, and vascular surgery.

More details on these are provided below.

In “Prevalence of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination among resident physicians: a systematic review and meta-analysis”, Bahji and Altomare summarized 52 cross-sectional studies in their meta-analysis. The overall pooled prevalence of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination was 64.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 51.0-77.1). Verbal, physical, and sexual intimidation, harassment, and discrimination were the most common forms reported by residents. Training status (55.5%), gender (41.7%), and ethnicity (20.6%) were the most commonly cited risk factors. The most common sources of IHD were relatives/friends of patients, nurses, and patients. The prevalence of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination among resident physicians continues to be quite high.

Brocklebank and Jowsey have contributed another image to the CMEJ: “Interprofessional education or silo education?” They depict the difficulties that practitioners may have in working in interprofessional teams having trained in separate buildings and without having interacted much at all.

“Application rates to surgical residency programs in Canada” by Dow and team explores the low and possibly declining interest in surgery among medical students. Using overall application trends, applications by discipline, and rankings by school of graduation they found that the number of rankings to orthopedic and vascular surgery decreased significantly as did applications to general, orthopedic, plastic, otolaryngology, and vascular surgery. There may be declining interest in some surgical disciplines.