Medical students’ quality of life and its association with harassment and social support

<b>Abstract</b>

<b><i>Objectives</i></b><b>: </b>To explore the associations between self-reported quality of life (QoL)
and harassment and the potential moderating effect of social support.<b>
</b>

<b><i>Design</i></b><b>: </b>Senior medical students were invited to participate in a survey
consisting of a background section, the world health organisation QoL
questionnaire (New Zealand version), a version of the generalized workplace
harassment questionnaire, and the multidimensional scale of perceived social
support. A series of multivariate statistical analyses were conducted.

<b><i>Results</i></b><b>: </b>Two hundred and five students completed the online survey (response rate
= 25%). The findings indicated a high incidence of verbal (90%) and covert
harassment (87%), with relatively low levels of physical harassment (6%) and
manipulation (6%). The correlational analyses indicated that low levels of QoL
were associated with high levels of verbal and covert harassment and high
levels of social support were directly associated with high levels of QoL. The
moderation models indicated that social support conditionally influences the
impact of verbal and covert harassment on social and psychological QoL.

<b><i>Conclusions</i></b><b>: </b>These findings imply that medical students experiencing harassment in
clinical learning environments likely experienced lowered levels of QoL. Social
support may moderate, in certain instances, the adverse impact of harassment on
QoL.<b> </b>