Prevalence and Risk of Inappropriate Sexual Behavior of Patients Toward Physical Therapist Clinicians and Students in the United States

Abstract

The extremely high prevalence of IPSB among physical therapist professionals warrants practitioner and student education as well as clear workplace policy and support.

Sexual Harassment in Healthcare SMEs: Behaviours of medical practitioners and medical tourists

“…Through 108 questionnaires from clinical and non-clinical medical staff at Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL), it is found that over 40% of them are exposed to sexually-related misbehaviour from patients. Contradicting with Boissonnault et al (2017), the results from Yusop, Dempster, and Stevenson (2014) unveiled that occurrence of harassment does not differ between employees' grade and position. Yusop et al (2014) also found that harassment, which also constitutes sexual, is topmost experience inappropriate followed by bullying and mobbing.…”

“…Meanwhile, the second criteria that were unravelled were medical practitioners' personal and professional characteristics which considered age, gender, marital status, treatment types and experience in providing care. Hence, Boissonnault et al (2017) unveiled that young and single female therapists with less working experience are prone to experiencing the inappropriate behaviour towards them. The final criteria for explaining sexual harassment is the specific abusive actions or events.…”

“…Through normalisation, medical practitioners are also told to merely accept the mishap instead taking corrective actions because those are part of what their job entails (Friborg et al, 2017;Nielsen et al, 2017) This is especially considering that the perpetrators are patients with cognitive disparity. Consequently, it results in the practitioners ignoring the harassment (Boissonnault et al, 2017), verbally prohibit the patients from continuing the misbehaviour and report to colleagues and supervisors (Friborg et al, 2017;Nielsen et al, 2017). The absence of an explicit sexual harassment policy also hinders them from stepping up for themselves because they view reporting as fruitless (Fallahi-Khoshknab et al, 2016)since there is no sound channel to advance their concern and implement the supposed corrective actions (Friborg et al, 2017;Nielsen et al, 2017) As for patients, it also important to note that local patients are given the access and time to lodge a police report and take the necessary legal actions moving forward.…”

“…For instance, Lee, Song, and Kim (2011) posited that over 52 percent of 542 female Korean nursing students had experienced at least one type of sexual harassment during their clinical practice. The perpetrators are mostly male patients in their 40s with whereby the majority of them are in the psychiatric ward.As the menace of non-fatal violence at the workplace is 16 times more apparent for healthcare practitioners than that for other sectors (Boissonnault, Cambier, Hetzel, & Plack, 2017), sexually-related patients' behaviours towards therapist are also prevalent. This is unveiled through an electronic survey of 890 physical therapists; professionals and students.…”

The gray zone of patient‐nurse communication: Inappropriate sexual behavior

“…8,9 ISB can be experienced by both healthcare professionals and patients, and can affect both professionals and patients in many areas. 10 However, studies on the subject generally include case reports or small case series, 11 and most of the research has been conducted on patients who have dementia and/or who are elderly people 12 ; the literature is therefore limited. 13 In this context, this review was written to investigate ISB and to study the responsibilities of nurses in the management of ISB in line with the literature.…”