Is she safe in Hospital?
How harassment unfolds for female health care providers
In the past few decades, there has been increasing awareness and reporting of harassment at the workplace throughout the world. This is a complex situation with different dimensions affecting both genders. The vulnerable can be junior staff, female staff, ethnic groups, transgenders, minority groups and several others.
For organizations, this is an enormous developing challenge affecting their outcomes and goals. It is becoming a major cause of loss of human resource and productivity, undermining the ambitious dreams of growth.
Health care industry has grown from a traditional patient-doctor interaction to complex organizational structures. Working in such an organization is complex and draining. Health cares professional face various challenges of both professional and non-professional nature. For a specific group of health care providers, these challenges are more complex both in quantity and quality.
Females in health care organizations take a very important role. They work as both doctors and nurses. Their work has an enormous impact on patient care and the overall functioning of an organization. Like many other females, they also face the challenge of harassment at the workplace. Such harassment can take various forms, including long working hours, lack of opportunities, inequality, sexualization, logistics, privacy, awkward discussions and others.
Working in a hospital requires multiple encounters with a distinct group of people. These include patients, their attendants, paramedics, nurses and fellow doctors. Duty hours are often unregulated and enormous. For a resident in training, they can be up to 90 weekly hours on the job. This means more than half of life is spent in the corridors of hospitals.
The quest to attain professional qualifications pushes female doctors to extend the limits of their physiology. The environment of the hospitals is rarely receptive of their needs. It doesn’t care if someone is going through a monthly wave of hormones or another life is breathing inside her.
All the organization care is to be active, attentive, receptive and productive.
In most centres, no specific policy exists to help female doctors adjust to their needs.
The quest of equality by feminist ideology push for equal rights of both genders. This also means similar working hours and situations for both. Such an analogy undermines the specific needs of females and set standards which are ambitious to achieve. The ideology of equity instead of equality can better serve the specific concerns of female doctors.
What makes them at risk of harassment?
Well, almost everything. From mandatory operation theatre scrub dresses, close encounters of clinical examination, physical contact during surgeries, to awkward sensitive discussions by male colleagues. The increasing complexity of modern health care means that competition is high to attain professional excellence. Such competition and unequal distribution of opportunities create an environment where exploitation is possible. Remarks on looks, race, clothes, posture and attitude serves to fulfil the inherent flirtations of men.
The risk and frequency of such harassing encounters are even higher for medical students and nurses. Their quest for skills and knowledge can be exploited to attain sexual perversions. Nurses on the other hand are well oriented to the overall environment, but their lesser appreciated role means that their voices go unheard.
Who is the harasser?
Almost everyone. Fellow doctors, peers, colleagues, para-medics, attendants, and even patients have been reported to undermine the dignity of female professionals. The close professional dependence on colleagues and professional need for closely examining patients make harassment possible and often justifiable.
The harasser sees beyond the professional obligations of females and takes advantage of them to fulfil their desires.
Is there any reporting system in place?
Certainly not. If the harasser is a senior fellow who is in charge of your evaluation, you will have to put your career at risk to speak out.
Who will dare do it when the career you are trying to make is already hanging on a thin string of support from family and society.
Even if you gather all the courage to do it, who will take action and under what law? The law of morality is definitely not enough here, and any other law, even if present somewhere deep in shelves, is not enough to give protection to the victim.
So what should she do?
Put the garbage under the carpet and continue to work with more blame on herself.
Blame her self that only if her posture or dress or words were better, no such thing would have happened. When there is no external support, victims end up blaming themselves for the acts of the harasser. The culture of staying silent further buries the incident deep in the victim's soul, only to haunt at a later time.
Harassment at the workplace for female doctors and nurses is real and alarmingly unreported. The increasing number of females pursuing health care as a career means that this problem is going to increase further. There is a need for awareness and putting systems in place for reporting and support of victims.
Protecting and incorporating female health care providers is the only way forward towards a diverse and growing health care industry.
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