Medical students start experiencing sexism and racism from patients—for example, sexual harassment—when they are in their early clerkship years, even before they have gone into their formal residency training.
From the time I trained to even now, there has been no formal training in how to deal with a patient who becomes violent or uses racial slurs.
There was an event in Mississauga about two years ago that made national and international headlines. A patient went into a walk-in clinic and was demanding to be seen by a white physician, and a lot of derogatory language was being used. At that time, the health minister and the premier were denouncing it. The college had indicated that physicians are afforded protection under the Ontario Human Rights Code, but also indicated that the college has absolutely no policy to actually deal with it.
That was one of our 11 recommendations: not only having mandatory training during medical school and in the residency training curricula, but also ensuring that provincial and territorial regulatory bodies develop policies to ensure that basic human rights codes are actually protected and there are policies to deal with harassment issues.