In regards to Matt's Question: "You have been accepted into medical school and one of your early clinical placements is with a surgical team. Your supervisor, a senior surgeon, likes to make jokes about the race, religion, sexual orientation, of the more junior members of the team. Occasionally he makes more serious but also discriminatory statements about the intelligence of Aboriginal people and how he believes the influx of Muslim immigrants is eroding Australian values. You know in your cohort there are Aboriginal students accepted through a separate entry scheme and international students from Malaysia who were the hijab. What, if anything, would you do in this situation?"
This situation is a complex one. Regardless of your fellow students his comments are discriminatory and unfounded, as well as racist. Diversity is something which should always be valued in any group of people. It is stated that he is your supervisor, which means that voicing your concerns to him directly would be sort of an unwise decision to make. I think that in the initial instance, I would ignore any comments he makes and make it obvious that I did not wish to participate in his banter in the slightest, and instead just continue to focus on the job at hand and not acknowledge these comments. A shocked/dirty look wouldn't go astray here either. I'm unsure how these sorts of things works, but seeing as I am on placement the first thing I would do, after establishing that this was a continued and frequent occurrence, would be to voice my concerns with whoever coordinates placements at the university. I'm not sure what the solution would be, but I would make a request to change supervisors or to find an alternative placement as I would not be comfortable working under such conditions. Also I'm not sure how it works, but if talking to the coordinator of the placements didn't work I would then seek out the next person in the medical school hierarchy, possibly the course coordinator. At this point of a solution wasn't reached, such as the surgeon being reprimanded or me being placed elsewhere or with another supervisor, I think the next thing I would do would be an anonymous complaint to whoever is in charge of the surgeon himself. Hopefully a resolution would be reached by now.
Actually now I think of it, comments like these over a continued period of time would really get to me quite a bit. I probably would end up making a comment to the surgeon, something along the lines of "I do not appreciate your comments, may we please focus on the job/surgery at hand?". I would still follow the aforementioned route, or first seeking out the placement coordinator etc.
So is this answer any good?