OPINION: Students should have a voice in Engemann hiring decisions
Six former USC students came forward two weeks ago with accusations of sexual battery and harassment against Dennis Kelly, a men’s health doctor who practiced at the Engemann Student Health Center until August 2018. In light of these accusations, it’s clear that there is a long way to go in mending the relationship between USC students and Engemann’s practitioners. Since a Los Angeles Times report detailing sexual misconduct allegations against former campus gynecologist George Tyndall was published last May, the University has focused its efforts on improving Engemann services. However, it has neglected to mend the relationship between students and Engemann’s health care providers. While the administration plays an important role in overseeing ethical practice, the individual doctors who interact directly with students must also establish trust. The University must give students a voice in choosing the people who provide them treatment.
Doctors hired by USC should not only be qualified by the University’s standards, but also approved by students. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Kelly reported that Kelly’s remarks and behavior became demeaning once he learned that the patients identified as gay or bisexual. Similarly, reports of Tyndall’s misconduct included multiple accounts of Tyndall’s alleged behavior being “creepy,” along with accounts of students feeling humiliated during their appointments and emotionally traumatized long after, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In the Tyndall case, University officials failed to take action even after learning about his alleged conduct through numerous reports filed by former patients.
Simply put, the University is not the best judge of what qualifies as a high standard of care for its students. It is time for students to have a central role in deciding which health care professionals they are comfortable receiving care from.
This means involving students in the screening process, a practice that has already been implemented successfully with employees at other universities. For example, at the University of Washington’s School of Computer Science and Engineering, students play a key role in hiring professors. Candidates for faculty positions give sample lectures, which student teaching assistants attend to determine whether or not they are a good fit for the student body and the school. At the end of the lectures, students provide written evaluations for administrators to consider in their hiring decisions. By giving the student body a voice in which professors become part of students’ academic journeys, the school has built a faculty team that students respect and trust.
Given the sensitive nature of sexual health, it makes sense to implement a similar student-centered approach to the hiring process at Engemann. Both Tyndall and Kelly were qualified doctors, but the discomfort and humiliation that students experienced under their treatment went unnoticed during the standardized screening process administered by school officials.
The opportunity to interact with doctors before they are officially hired would allow students to evaluate whether or not those doctors are people they can trust and comfortably seek out for sexual health concerns, especially for students who are placed in vulnerable positions because they are unaware of standard practices. Students should be able to interact with doctors, gauge professionalism, conduct and style of practice. If students are able to interact with doctors before they are hired, the rest of the student body would be more likely to trust doctors at the student health center.
According to The Pharmaceutical Journal, the key pillars of building and maintaining trust between health care providers and patients are communication, honesty, competence and respect. In taking advantage of their patients, Tyndall and Kelly severely violated each of these principles. Their actions have tarnished not only their own careers, but also the credibility of the entire Engemann Student Health Center.
As Student Health Services administrators work to repair the relationship between doctors and patients, they have taken steps to involve students by holding a conversation series in which students have the opportunity to voice their concerns and advice. Hosting these talks after physicians have already been hired and simply talking about the breaches of trust is not enough. To truly place student interests at the forefront of health care, the University must begin actively including students in every step of reshaping the standard of care at the health center, beginning with the hiring process.