Background: Sexual harassment poses a risk in any workforce, but is particularly relevant within the medical field as medical professionals are expected to exhibit high levels of trust, professionalism, and confidentiality. While sexual harassment in the practice of medicine is unethical, a third of medical students and residents have reported experiencing sexual harassment during their medical training. There is ample evidence to suggest that public opinion and understanding of sexual harassment is influenced by its portrayal in television dramas. Given the popularity of medical television programs and the increasing spotlight on sexual harassment in society, we aimed to investigate the frequency and type of sexual harassment behavior depicted in televised medical dramas.
Methods: We selected 4 medical television dramas: M*A*S*H (1972), ER (1994), Scrubs (2001), and Grey’s Anatomy (2005). A RedCAP data entry tool was created to document sexual harassment events by category as defined by the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. Student coders were trained using a brief presentation on how to identify sexual harassment events and introduced to qualitative coding methods. They coded an episode of The Resident (2018) as a group with the primary investigators to standardize the coding process. They coded 3 episodes of St. Elsewhere (1982) on their own, which were reviewed for content and clarity. The coders watched their assigned series and recorded sexual harassment events in the data entry tool.
Results: The coders identified 66 sexual harassment events and 12 instances of consensual sexual activity in 204 episodes (7,834 minutes) of medical dramas. The 12 depictions of consensual activity were from Grey’s Anatomy. The number of sexual harassment events were equal for ER and Scrubs (N=23 for both), followed by M*A*S*H (N=15) and Grey’s Anatomy (N=5). The most common events were verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature (43.9%), followed by inappropriate sexual advances (24.2%), sexist jokes or slurs (21.2%), favoritism based on gender (7.6%), and requests for sexual favors (3%). Perpetrators were mostly male (75.8%) and victims were mostly female (75.8%). Attending physicians and resident physicians were most commonly depicted as perpetrators, while victims were most commonly nurses and resident physicians.
Conclusions: In a social and political climate in which sexual harassment and misconduct have become increasingly relevant, our study examined portrayals of sexual misconduct through one of the most popular TV genres – medical dramas. Sexual harassment was portrayed in all 4 medical television dramas reviewed, irrespective of the era that each show aired. Medical professionals in positions of power were most commonly depicted as perpetrators of sexual harassment, with nurses and medical trainees the most common targets of their behavior . How sexual harassment is depicted in popular media (for example, sexual harassment behavior serving as comic relief on the show “Scrubs” that is not only tolerated but encouraged by both male and female staff alike) may inadvertently sway public perception of sexual harassment being an issue for concern in the medical profession.