Residents and Faculty Work Together to Reduce Faculty Intimidation of Residents and Improve Morale

In 2011-2012, the annual Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) resident survey at our institution revealed that, of our 40 residents and 6 fellows, residents generally felt unable to raise concerns for fear of retaliation. As this result echoed the survey of the previous year, leadership convened what would be called the Educational Climate Committee (ECC) comprising interested faculty and residents and aimed at examining the problem of intimidation and making recommendations to improve the educational climate. Here, we describe the formation and process of the group, as well as the outcome of the group's work. Although there is some literature on medical student intimidation, very little is published about resident intimidation in the USA. Because we believe that residents in other programs may experience similar concerns and that this is a critical item on the ACGME annual resident survey, we offer our experience for consideration.