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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be easy. But it took us over a\u00a0 year,\u201d said Dr. Shannon Ruzycki, the study’s lead author. <\/p>\n
The researchers eventually identified 208 physicians and 689 alleged victims, most of them women and girls.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re 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,\u201d and Ruzycki, an associate professor in the departments of medicine and community health sciences at the University of Calgary.<\/p>\n
\u201cShouldn\u2019t the general public have easy access to this information?\u201d<\/p>\n
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Dr. Shannon Ruzycki is an associate professor in the departments of medicine and community health sciences at the University of Calgary. (University of Calgary)<\/p>\n
The researchers uncovered a range of complaints, including sexual relationships with patients, voyerism and inappropriate physical exams.<\/p>\n
Nearly one-third of cases related to sexual assault and another 36 per cent involved sexual boundary or sexual misconduct complaints.<\/p>\n
Family medicine was the discipline most commonly cited.<\/p>\n
The researchers found police complaints in 72 cases and report that 29 physicians were convicted.<\/p>\n
In 13 cases physicians were criminally charged, the study noted, but there was no notification on their provincial regulatory college profile.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought the lack of reporting and consistent transparent reporting really means that the regulatory bodies are not meeting their obligations to protect the public,” said Ruzycki.<\/p>\n
According to Dr. Kirstie Lithgow, the study\u2019s first author,\u00a0about 30 per cent of the accused Canadian doctors had previous complaints.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a risk that if somebody is behaving in this way and abusing their power \u2014 and creating an unsafe environment for patients \u2014 they have the opportunity to harm a lot of people,\u201d said Lithgow, a clinical associate professor at the University of Calgary\u2019s Cumming School of Medicine.<\/p>\n
The study’s authors are calling for a national registry that would include the complaint, discipline and criminal history of all practicing physicians.<\/p>\n
“We need a standardized way of collecting this information and reporting it both for research purposes but also for the general public accountability and transparency,” said Ruzycki.<\/p>\n
They said this could take the form of a stand-alone database or it could be incorporated into a pan-Canadian physician licensing program<\/a>, which the Canadian Medical Association has been calling on governments to implement.<\/p>\n “I worry that from a patient perspective there isn’t a really good place to go to get reliable information,” said Lithgow.<\/p>\n Protections in place<\/p>\n According to Ruzycki, Alberta, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec have specific protections in place.<\/p>\n
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Dr. Kirstie Lithgow is a clinical associate professor at the University of Calgary\u2019s Cumming School of Medicine. (University of Calgary)Calgary police share information<\/p>\n