Behind the Screen: Exploring Trainee Experiences With Consultant-Involved Conflicts Through Reddit Narratives

Reddit is an anonymous social media platform where users often share candid experiences, including in medical education. Conflict in medical education, particularly involving consultants, has been shown to have an impact on the learner experience and the learning environment.

In order to gain insight into the trainee experience with consultant-involved conflicts, we collected Reddit narratives written by trainees over a one-year period. The use of Reddit narratives allowed a candid view into this sensitive aspect of medical training unaffected by an interviewer's presence. We performed narrative and content analyses to understand the experience of conflict, including conflict types, drivers and management strategies.

Analysis of 208 posts revealed five types of conflict: communication challenges; conflicts relating to medical culture; disagreements about medical practice; dissonance in mindset, perspective or perception; and moral conflicts. Four drivers of conflict were identified: the trainee's self-perception, interpretation of professionalism, desire to learn and moral values. Five strategies for conflict management were identified: anger, awareness, asking for help, communication and avoidance.

These findings illuminate the need for safe spaces to debrief about trainee experiences of consultant-involved conflict. In the increasingly diverse, high-stakes, high-stress clinical environments where training occurs, medical learners may not have access to the conflict management and dialogue skills needed to artfully and sustainably navigate hierarchy-laden disagreements. We encourage educators to build real-world examples into curricula and incorporate conflict resolution training.