From today NHS staff in England will be able to whistleblow on colleagues for sexual harassment, as part of plans to improve safety for staff across the health service. To discuss the plans Nuala speaks to Dr Chelcie Jewitt co-founder of Surviving in Scrubs set up to raise awareness of the sexist and misogynistic culture within health care.
Surviving in Scrubs, a campaign group representing doctors who’ve faced sexual violence in medicine, has called on the health secretary to force dozens of medical schools to commit to new NHS standards for tackling sexual assault and harassment.
Sexual safety campaigners have written to the health secretary Wes Streeting to call for action over what they deem a failure of medical schools to acknowledge the problem of sexual assault and abuse of students at university and during clinical placements.
I was assaulted by a consultant and witnessed awful behaviour. Women in healthcare have the right to feel safe. Written by co-founder Dr Becky Cox.
Dr Becky Cox, a co-founder of Surviving in Scrubs, said: “The stark findings of this investigation should put into sharp focus the work that the health secretary and NHS leaders need to do to ensure the freedom of NHS staff to work without threat of sexual violence from patients and other staff members.
An investigation by The BMJ and the Guardian revealed “shocking” levels of sexual assault and harassment in the NHS, with more than 35,000 cases of rape, sexual assault, harassment, stalking, and abusive remarks recorded between 2017 and 2022. […] With no NHS-wide guidance on how to record incidents, reporting systems varied across trusts so the true scale of the problem is unknown. Campaigners and survivors say victims do not feel able to report and are not always supported when they do. So what can trusts do and how can the problem be better managed?
The treatment of female doctors in particular has come under the spotlight in recent months, as more women speak up. In April, several female surgeons spoke to the Times newspaper about the male-dominated world of surgery and the harassment they faced from colleagues.
Thank you for your article which highlights the continuing endemic issue of sexism and harassment in medicine. For years we have all heard about the MeToo campaign, with professions opening up and telling their stories of gendered abuse and sexism, from the media and film communities right up to our current governing bodies. However medicine and more broadly the healthcare community have been slower to take action.
