Workplace Sexual Harassment in Two General Hospitals in Taiwan: The Incidence, Perception, and Gender Differences

Abstract

Workplace Sexual Harassment in Two General Hospitals in Taiwan: The Incidence, Perception, and Gender Differences: Liang‐Jen WANG, et al. Department of Psychiatry, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Keelung, Taiwan— Objectives The aims of this study were to examine sexual harassment (SH) among hospital staffs in Taiwan, in terms of three‐month incidence rate, the frequency of each type and the perception of SH, perpetrated by coworkers, patients and patients' families and to investigate the gender differences for these issues. Methods The subjects were employees at two general hospitals in Taiwan. The self‐administered “Hospital Sexual Harassment Questionnaire” was sent to eligible staff, and the voluntary respondents answered the questionnaire anonymously. There were 536 respondents available for analysis, with an overall response rate of 43.4%. Results The three‐month incidence rates of SH by coworkers, patients, and patients' families in our study population were 2.4, 4.3, and 1.7%, respectively. Telling sexual jokes was the most common type of SH. The males had greater opportunities to be exposed to porn videos by their coworkers. The females were more frequently exposed to sex jokes and remarks made by patients and their family members and unwanted physical touching by patients in the workplace. There were significant differences with regard to the perception of sex jokes and sexually explicit verbal descriptions as SH or not between genders. Conclusions The information in this study can be a helpful reference for administrators in hospitals when they are establishing education plans and policies. It might be possible to prevent sexual harassment and misunderstandings between genders and to further avoid the negative impact on the emotional well‐being of workers in hospitals.

Sexual harassment from older residents at long-term care facilities: is it really part of the job?

“…Sexual harassment: prevalence, types and consequences Sexual harassment has been defined as any "unwanted or unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, in a workplace or in connection with work, which makes a protected person feel humiliated, intimidated, discriminated against or offended" (International Labour Organization, 2001) and is relatively frequent in health care settings (e.g. Çelik and Çelik, 2007;Somani et al, 2015;Wang, 2012). Although the estimated prevalence varies according to country, research methodology, and specific work setting, it has been estimated that one in four nurses are exposed to sexual harassment (Spector et al, 2014).…”

Promoting anti-corruption, transparency and accountability in the recruitment and promotion of health workers to safeguard health outcomes

“…This study's literature search turned up substantial evidence of sexual harassment of health workers especially female nurses, although the link to corruption in employment or promotion was implicit and not explicit [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. A 2014 quantitative review of studies on sexual harassment of nurses turned up a total of 136 articles with data on 151,347 nurses from 160 samples and revealed that up to 25% of nurses have experienced sexual harassment at work [55].…”

Developing a questionnaire in occupational epidemiological research: Some common sense guidelines

“…Sensitive issues change from one culture to another so you might need to be judicious in choosing the questions you might ask a particular cultural group. For example, studying the issue of "sexual harassment" among workers (29) or students (30) could be categorized as a very sensitive issue. Sensitive issues might be asked later in the questionnaire by explaining why these personal questions are important to be asked.…”