Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Harassment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harassment. Show all posts

Friday, September 6, 2019

Walking on Eggshells With Trainees in the Clinical Learning Environment—Avoiding the Eggshells Is Not the Answer.

Gold MA, Rosenthal SL, Wainberg ML.
JAMA Pediatr. 
Published online August 05, 2019.
doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.2501

Here is an excerpt:

Every trainee inevitably will encounter material or experiences that create discomfort. These situations are necessary for growth and faculty should be able to have the freedom in those situations to challenge the trainee’s assumptions.5 However, faculty have expressed concern that in the effort to manage the imbalance of power and protect trainees from the potential of abuse and harassment, we have labeled difficult conversations and discomfort as maltreatment. When faculty feel that the academic institution sides with trainees without considering the faculty member’s perspective and actions, they may feel as if their reputation and hard work as an educator has been challenged or ruined. For example, if a trainee reports a faculty member for creating a “sexually hostile” environment because the faculty has requested that the trainee take explicit sexual histories of adolescents, it may result in the faculty avoiding this type of difficult conversation and lead to a lack of skill development in trainees. Another unintended consequence is that trainees will not gain skills in having difficult conversations with their faculty, and without feedback they may not grow in their clinical expertise. As our workforce becomes increasingly diverse and we care for a range of populations, the likelihood of misunderstandings and the need to talk about sensitive topics and have difficult conversations increases.

There are several ways to create an environment that fosters the ability for trainees and faculty to walk across eggshells without fear. It is important to continue medical school training regarding unconscious bias, cultural sensitivity, and communication skills. This should include helping trainees not only apply these skills with each other and with their patients but also with their faculty. Trainees are likely to have as many unconscious biases toward their faculty as their faculty have toward them. For example, one study found that at one institution, female medical school faculty were given significantly lower teaching evaluations by third-year medical students in all clerkship rotations compared with male medical school faculty. Pediatrics showed the second largest difference, with surgery having the greatest difference.

The info is here.

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Strengthening Our Science: AGU Launches Ethics and Equity Center

Robyn Bell
EOS.org
Originally published February 14, 2019

In the next century, our species will face a multitude of challenges. A diverse and inclusive community of researchers ready to lead the way is essential to solving these global-scale challenges. While Earth and space science has made many positive contributions to society over the past century, our community has suffered from a lack of diversity and a culture that tolerates unacceptable and divisive conduct. Bias, harassment, and discrimination create a hostile work climate, undermining the entire global scientific enterprise and its ability to benefit humanity.

As we considered how our Centennial can launch the next century of amazing Earth and space science, we focused on working with our community to build diverse, inclusive, and ethical workplaces where all participants are encouraged to develop their full potential. That’s why I’m so proud to announce the launch of the AGU Ethics and Equity Center, a new hub for comprehensive resources and tools designed to support our community across a range of topics linked to ethics and workplace excellence. The Center will provide resources to individual researchers, students, department heads, and institutional leaders. These resources are designed to help share and promote leading practices on issues ranging from building inclusive environments, to scientific publications and data management, to combating harassment, to example codes of conduct. AGU plans to transform our culture in scientific institutions so we can achieve inclusive excellence.

The info is here.

Thursday, September 6, 2018

Building An Ethics-First Employee Culture Is Crucial For All Leaders

Patrick Quinlan
Forbes.com
Originally posted July 25, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

These issues — harassment, bias, sexism — are nothing new in the tech sector but, now more than ever before, employees are taking matters into their own hands to make sure ethical business practices and values are upheld, even when leadership fails to do so.

In the last few years, we have seen the entire employer-employee paradigm shift, from offices embracing open floor plans to leaders encouraging team bonding activities. Underlying this massive business transformation is a stronger emphasis on the people who make up organizations, their values and their opinions. What we’ve borne witness to is the rise of empowered employees.

For leaders, shifting gears to focus on people first may feel scary. No one wants their employees to point out something is wrong at the company. But if instilling core ethical values is truly your objective, openness to criticism is part of the job description. Your commitment to promoting a safe, empowering space is not only beneficial for your employees — it ultimately strengthens your company’s culture, values, ethics — and therefore your company’s success long-term.

When leaders lead proactively, encouraging employees to come forward with an opinion or idea, employees feel safe, heard and ready to improve their company culture from the inside out. Whether you’re running a technology giant or a small startup, it’s no overnight shift. But you can start small by asking questions, taking feedback seriously and celebrating your team’s autonomy.

The information is here.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Social Media as a Weapon to Harass Women Academics

George Veletsianos and Jaigris Hodson
Inside Higher Ed
Originally published May 29, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Before beginning our inquiry, we assumed that the people who responded to our interview requests would be women who studied video games or gender issues, as prior literature had suggested they would be more likely to face harassment. But we quickly discovered that women are harassed when writing about a wide range of topics, including but not limited to: feminism, leadership, science, education, history, religion, race, politics, immigration, art, sociology and technology broadly conceived. The literature even identifies choice of research method as a topic that attracts misogynistic commentary.

So who exactly is at risk of harassment? They form a long list: women scholars who challenge the status quo; women who have an opinion that they are willing to express publicly; women who raise concerns about power; women of all body types and shapes. Put succinctly, people may be targeted for a range of reasons, but women in particular are harassed partly because they happen to be women who dare to be public online. Our respondents reported that they are harassed because they are women. Because they are women, they become targets.

At this point, if you are a woman reading this, you might be nodding your head, or you might feel frustrated that we are pointing out something so incredibly obvious. We might as well point out that rain is wet. But unfortunately, for many people who have not experienced the reality of being a woman online, this fact is still not obvious, is minimized, or is otherwise overlooked. To be clear, there is a gendered element to how both higher education institutions and technology companies handle this issue.

The article is here.

Monday, September 30, 2013

‘Everyday Sadists’ Among Us

By Jan Hoffman
The New York Times
Originally published September 16, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Those who enjoy inflicting at least moderate pain on others, directly or vicariously, mingle with us daily. Think mean girls, taunting a classmate to commit suicide. Or the professor who grills a squirming, clueless student, lips curled in a small, savage smile.

Delroy L. Paulhus, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, calls such people “everyday sadists.”

“They exist on a spectrum,” he said. “It could be at a hockey game and your guy is pummeling the opponent into hamburger and people are standing up having orgasms, to taking revenge on those you think deserve it, to schadenfreude.”

But acknowledging that sadists regularly cross our paths is unsettling, said Scott O. Lilienfeld, a professor of psychology at Emory University, who studies personality disorders. “We prefer to think, ‘There’s sadists, and then there’s the rest of us.’ ”

The entire story is here.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Beauty, Personality, and Affect as Antecedents of Counterproductive Work Behavior Receipt

Brent A. Scott, Timothy A. Judge
Human Performance 
Vol. 26, Iss. 2, 2013

Abstract

Over the years, much attention has been devoted to understanding counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and its related concepts. Less is known, however, about whether certain employees find themselves more than others to be the targets of CWB. To examine this issue, we tested a model that positioned CWB receipt as a function of employees' personality (neuroticism, agreeableness), their appearance (physical attractiveness), and the negative emotions felt toward those employees by their coworkers. Two studies using multiple sources of data revealed that disagreeable and physically unattractive employees received more CWB from their coworkers, coworker negative emotion felt toward employees was associated with CWB receipt, and the relationship between employee agreeableness and CWB receipt was due, in part, to coworker negative emotion.

An accumulating body of literature has examined counterproductive work behavior (CWB), defined as “behavior intended to hurt the organization or other members of the organization” (Spector & Fox, 2002, p. 271). Researchers have investigated CWB under a variety of labels, including abuse (Keashly, Trott, & MacLean, 1994), aggression (Baron & Neuman, 1996), antisocial behavior (Giacalone & Greenberg, 1997), harassment (Bowling & Beehr, 2006), incivility (Andersson & Pearson, 1999), social undermining (Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002), and workplace deviance (Robinson & Bennett, 1995). Collectively, this research has drawn attention to CWB in organizations by identifying reasons why employees engage in such harmful actions, with antecedents encompassing both personal factors (e.g., agreeableness, conscientiousness, job satisfaction, and negative emotion) and situational factors (e.g., unfair treatment; for meta-analyses, see Berry, Ones, & Sackett, 2007; Dalal, 2005; Salgado, 2002).

The entire article is here.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

New Ethical And Legal Issues Associated With Cyberbullying On College Campuses

Medical News Today
Originally published July 14, 2013

Cyberbullying in the college environment can pose serious consequences for students' living and learning environments, including physical endangerment, according to newly published research by a UT Arlington associate education professor.

Jiyoon Yoon, director of the Early Childhood - Grade 6 Program for the UT Arlington College of Education and Health Professions, co-authored the paper "Cyberbullying Presence, Extent, and Forms in a Midwestern Post-secondary Institution," * which appears in the June 2013 issue of Information Systems Education Journal.

The researchers found that most respondents considered cyberbullying to be more prevalent at the secondary school level. But respondents said harassment via social media, text message or other electronic communications can be pernicious in the college environment and merited official response from administrators.

The entire story is here.

The research article can be found here.