Invitation to attend a seminar series on sexual safety in medicine

My name is Louise Stone and I am coordinating a series of online seminars with international experts on the difficult topic of sexual safety in medicine. Given your roles in prevocational and vocational training, I thought you might find this series helpful in your own work keeping doctors in training safe.

We know from the national training survey that the prevalence of sexual harassment in medicine is unacceptably high, although prevalence studies are difficult to interpret and methodologically complex. There have been a number of initiatives to reduce this form of professional misconduct including the work of Jillann Farmer and her team,  leading important work on the culture of healthcare,  Our work is focusing on the specific issues faced within the discipline of medicine. You can access some briefing materials on the challenges within medicine here.

Who is involved in the seminars?

I am a GP, with clinical, research, policy and teaching expertise in mental health. My work was motivated by a clinical encounter with a doctor in training who had been assaulted by her supervisor. As a GP experienced in the management of sexual trauma, I was surprised how challenging that consultation was, and it led to a decade of research and writing in this area. Since then, I’ve led a team of 76 authors from 23 countries to write our international text on sexual harassment in medicine, to be published by Cambridge University Press late in 2024. I also led an Australasian Summit on Sexual Harassment in Medicine in October 2023. These two projects have meant I’ve been fortunate to meet outstanding writers and speakers across the world, and I thought it was important to open up the opportunity to meet with some of them and discuss how we might work together to minimise sexual harms.

In the next 12 months, I’ll be leading the following seminars, led by experts from these two initiatives, and others. All seminars will be recorded and available synchronously and asynchronously.

For more information on the seminars and to register click 

Each seminar will be run online in two sessions: 8am-12pm and 2-5 pm Australian time. Recordings are available after the event for most sessions. Tickets are $200 for doctors, and $100 for doctors in training. Seminars are free for medical students. The proceeds for these seminars will fund the Open Access costs of our international book on sexual harassment in medicine (to be published by Cambridge University Press in late 2024).