Sexual Harassment & Cardiothoracic Surgery - #UsToo?

Abstract Background Fifty-eight percent of women in science, engineering, and medicine report being affected by sexual harassment. We sought to determine the extent of SH in cardiothoracic surgery. Methods We developed a survey based on the Sexual Experience Questionnaire-Workplace, physician wellness and burnout survey. The survey was open to responses for 45 days and disseminated via the STS, WTS and TSRA listervs. A reminder email was issued at 28 days. Student's t-tests, Fisher's exact, and Chi-square were used to compare results. Results Of 790 respondents, 75% were male and 82% were attendings. 81% of female surgeons vs.46% of male attending surgeons experienced SH (p Conclusions Sexual harassment is present in CT surgery among faculty and trainees. While women surgeons are more commonly affected, male surgeons also are subjected to SH. Despite witnessed events, intervention currently is limited. Policies, safeguards, and bystander training should be instituted to decrease these events.