Citation

Dubin K, Milewski AR, Shin J, Kalman TP. Health Hum. Rights 2017; 19(2): 265-277.

Affiliation

Clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and co-medical director of the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Harvard School of Public Health, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

29302181

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a survey of medical students' attitudes toward torture and discusses variables that may correlate with those attitudes. In late 2016, 483 enrolled medical and MD-PhD students at the Weill Cornell Medical College received an anonymous, institutional review board-approved survey that included questions about torture and its effectiveness, demographic questions, inquiries about personal experiences of harassment or discrimination, and questions regarding engagement in human rights activities. Some questions were drawn from a 2008 University of Illinois survey of medical students' attitudes toward torture, the only prior such survey at a US medical university. Of the 483 students who were contacted, 121 (25%) returned completed questionnaires, with responses indicating strong opposition to torture and skepticism about its usefulness. Respondents expressed greater opposition to torture in this survey than those who participated in the 2008 survey. Respondents' involvement in Weill Cornell's human rights program was associated with significantly stronger opposition to torture, while personal experiences of harassment were associated with a trend toward weaker opposition to torture. Respondents' answers closely approximate the clearly stated ethics of the profession, suggesting that human rights education during medical school may contribute to the development of proper values in young physicians even before they proceed into practice.

Language: en