Medicine, misconduct and confronting #MeToo

In 2017, after press coverage of alleged sexual abuse by prominent men, Alyssa Milano posted a tweet: ‘If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write “me too” as a reply’. #MeToo then trended. While the hashtag was not new, having been used by Tarana Burke a decade earlier, what was new was the sheer volume of posts and publicity: 1.7 million tweets from 85 countries.1 In the UK, it was clear that sexual harassment and violence remained societal problems, also affecting life and work within the NHS. A flurry of articles highlighted both sexual misconduct and harassment occurring within the healthcare profession.2 Over half a decade later, with many pronouncements of the need to address these issues, there remains little actual training for healthcare professionals on the issue. The e-Learning for Healthcare platform contains no training on sexual harassment and only briefly addresses the wider connected issue of bullying. While active bystander training has been recommended for addressing issues of equality and inclusion in the NHSE/I London Equality and Inclusion Programme, there is no such programme that focuses on sexual harassment and violence for NHS employees. We therefore ask: has #MeToo achieved anything? What can we do in healthcare to drive real change around harassment and sexual violence affecting those working within the NHS? How can we turn all the rhetoric into action, rather than just ‘institutional hot air’?