Background: Student clerkship experiences may suffer if teachers are not sympathetic to students' clinical interests.
Purpose: In this study, we quantified these experiences, compared reports of primary care and focused specialty students, and identified clerkships and teachers that posed special problems.
Methods: Students starting their 4th year at 6 schools completed a survey.
Results: The response rate was 75%. Students reported that these experiences, which were provoked by their clinical interests, were common: hearing deprecating comments about their interests, being denied learning opportunities, receiving lower evaluations, being discouraged from pursing their interests, and needing to be evasive for self-protection. Primary care students reported less mistreatment than focused specialty students. Students identified some clerkships and types of teachers as special problem sources. Students reported mistreatment triggered by clinical interests at twice the national rates for mistreatment triggered by race or sex.
Conclusions: Such mistreatment is common and challenges medical schools to ensure that students are treated well regardless of their career aspirations.