Researchers from the University of Calgary say they’ve found key gaps in the way allegations and findings of sexual assault and misconduct against physicians are tracked and reported in Canada — and they argue that’s putting patients at risk.
Their new study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, looked at hundreds of complaints between 2019 and 2024.
The researchers scoured media stories, court documents and provincial regulatory college websites looking for Canadian cases of sex- and gender-based violence, harassment and discrimination.
The researchers eventually identified 208 physicians and 689 alleged victims, most of them women and girls.
“We’re well trained people who know how to use a database, who spend lots of time on the internet. And it was challenging for us to find out what were the outcomes, what actually happened,” and Ruzycki, an associate professor in the departments of medicine and community health sciences at the University of Calgary.
“Shouldn’t the general public have easy access to this information?”
Honestly, this should be every government-funded industry where they have power over members of the public. Teachers, police, prison guards, physicians, etc. Too much important info gets trapped in provincial or even municipal databases.
You’d think this is an obvious thing to do, but apparently it isn’t
And in professional database silos, where exactly zero information sees the light of day.