Three per cent of UK doctors have personally experienced sexual abuse, harassment or misconduct in the last three years, reveals a report published by Medscape.
Medscape’s UK Sexual Harassment of Doctors Report 2019 provides data gathered in a survey of 1,316 doctors, 39 medical students, 22 medical academics and 18 physician assistants practising in the UK between July 11 and Aug 7, 2019.
The responses showed that 2 per cent of men and 5 per cent of women had personally experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. Sexual harassment had been witnessed by 5 per cent of respondents and 1 per cent (all male) had been accused of sexual harassment.
The most common forms of sexual harassment experienced by UK doctors were infringement on personal space and unwanted physical contact.
Three-quarters of those who experienced sexual harassment by a colleague named another physician as the perpetrator. Over 70 per cent of perpetrators were male.
Sexual harassment was more prevalent in certain specialties such as anaesthetics, general surgery and plastic surgery, and was lower in general practice, emergency medicine and paediatrics.
The full report is available here.
