Authors
1
Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics, Management and Administrative Sciences, Semnan University, Iran
2
Educational Affairs Management Center, Vice Chancellor for Education, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
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Document Type : Letter to Editor
10.22038/hmed.2025.81077.1391
Abstract
Introduction: One of the biggest challenges of human resource management is bullying in the academic environment. Bullying in medicine is as old as the profession itself. In the backyard of medical education, medical assistants mostly tolerate bullying because they have long accepted bullying as a norm in the medical community and are very unlikely to oppose this harmful behavior. For many medical assistants, intimidation, verbal abuse, and sometimes even physical violence are interpreted as part of the grueling residency training. Bullying in medical education is the governance of a hidden curriculum. Bullying culture practices encourage the creation of a cycle of bullying; the victims of today's bullying will be the inheritors of tomorrow's bullying. A key way we can expect more bullying to be reported is to promote and encourage victims to speak out through appropriate channels and communication. Considering the destructive effects of bullying, creating proper mechanisms to reduce this phenomenon, such as including graduation questionnaires for medical assistants, identifying factors that cause the prevalence of bullying in the medical profession, and implementing anti-bullying policies, may be beneficial to eliminate these misbehaviors.
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