[Students' perception about mistreatment in undergraduate medical training]

Alarms about mistreatment in medical education have been raised for almost 30 years.

To describe the frequency of abuse reports among medical students at a university in Chile, investigating their association with age, sex, and educational level.

The Mistreatment by Teachers Questionnaire was applied to 264 first to seventh year medical students (54% males). An exploratory factorial analysis of the instrument was performed, a descriptive analysis was made and its relationship with age, sex and level of training were evaluated.

Ninety eight percent of respondents reported having been mistreated at least once. Mistreatment was grouped into three factors with a confidence ranging between α = 0.79 and 0.93, namely demoralization, deregulated demands and physical aggression. The first two were associated with age and level of education. There were no differences by sex.

Mistreatment is common in undergraduate medical education, as it has been found in other universities around the world.