Almost half of doctors have been sexually harassed by patients – 52% of female doctors, 34% male and 45% overall, finds new study from 7 countries – including unwanted sexual attention, jokes of a sexual nature, asked out on dates, romantic messages, and inappropriate reactions, such as an erection.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imj.16513

From the linked article:

Almost half of doctors internationally have been sexually harassed by patients, new research has found, prompting calls for medics to be given panic alarms to help repel such behaviour.

Globally, 45% of doctors have suffered sexual harassment of different sorts from patients, according to a review covering seven countries published in the Internal Medicine Journal.

More than half (52.2%) of female doctors have experienced sexual harassment, which means they are much more likely to be affected than their male counterparts (34.4%), the academics found.

Doctors are subjected to many types of sexual harassment, including unwanted sexual attention and patients telling jokes of a sexual nature, asking them out on dates, touching them inappropriately and sending them romantic messages or letters.

Medics also have to contend with people they are treating revealing body parts to them or having an inappropriate reaction, such as an erection, or making sexual comments to them during a physical examination or unnecessarily requesting such an examination.

Should getting an erection be considered sexual harassment? It’s pretty much involuntary.