Violence in the Hospital-Reply

Abstract

In Reply. —We have heard from numerous institutions that are exploring ways to prevent undesirable behavior directed toward students and deal more effectively with those behaviors when they occur. Dr Slomka addresses an additional concern related to this training issue—the violence and abuse of patients in the hospital setting. Although our article on medical student abuse did not directly address the effects that the abuse of students may have on patient care, this was graphically described by several comments of students and graduate physicians that were received in response to this study as well as Dr Silver's original communication that first focused on the significance of the abuse of medical students during the educational process. 1,2 I agree with Dr Slomka that education in ethics can provide a vocabulary and framework for sensitizing health care practitioners to issues of violence and abuse in the hospital setting. However, we feel that