Medical Student Attitudes and Knowledge Gaps in Responding to Human Trafficking Signs in the Clinical Setting.

Human trafficking (HT) is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to make people engage in commercial sex acts or labor (Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, 2000[1] ). Based on surveys from survivors of HT, up to 87.8% of people experiencing trafficking (PET) interact with health systems during their trafficking (1). While healthcare workers could play a key role in identifying signs of PET and increasing access to services, proper training and education is needed to do so. This is particularly true in the Emergency Department (ED), with studies showing 63% of PET present to the ED yet only 4.8% of ED physicians feel comfortable identifying signs of HT (1, 2).As a result of their decreased patient load, medical students often have more time to build trust with patients and note subtle signs indicating HT; however, incorporation of trafficking-related modules early in the clinical training process is critical to this process. In order to create a comprehensive curriculum to train medical students on recognizing and managing PET in the ED, a better understanding of baseline medical student knowledge of HT is needed. We surveyed medical students from five institutions to identify their level of knowledge of HT, response to suspected or known cases of HT, and attitudes towards learning about HT in their undergraduate curricula this is a very old reference.