A report on the state of bullying & harassment within plastic surgery in the United Kingdom

Many surgical and medical groups in the UK and around the world have investigated the existing cultures within their own workplaces. The Australian college of surgeons, in 2015, conducted a survey that identified that bullying, harassment, sexual harassment and discrimination were endemic. Unsurprisingly this culture persists, and not only produces a workforce which underperforms but leads to continuous poor behaviour and substandard clinical outcomes for patients. PLASTA, in collaboration with BAPRAS, adopted the Royal College of Australian Surgeons survey (RACS) to sample our own plastic surgery community, at all grades. We present the results here and our suggestions for addressing these issues in the following editorial.