Sexual Harassment In Nursing

Throughout my experience, I have found that nursing has some very distinct characteristics of culture that I have not observed in other areas of my academic career. Indeed, sexual harassment does exist, but in a study comprising of 151,347 nurses, it was the least described form of harassment taking place in nursing (Spector, Zhou, & Xin Xuan, 2014). Most incidents of harassment took place in the form of nonphysical violence perpetuated by fellow coworkers (Spector, Coulter, Stockwell, & Matz, 2007). These events represented approximately 67% of all reported incidents in comparison to the 25% of reported occurrences of sexual harassment (Spector et al., 2014). Based on my own experiences, those shared with me by other nurses, and a countless number of research reports indicating a wide-spread …show more content…
I know individuals who have experienced the type of harassment described by persons in a position of power over them. The mistreatment experienced was disguised through the misuse of legitimate policies and procedures that corresponded to work-related tasks. Additional behaviors exhibited by these ‘persons of power’ included excessive scrutiny of work, public degradation of character, and inaccurate documentation of work performance. In many cases, these circumstances made the harassment difficult for others to recognize, led to unsuccessful attempts in speaking out to stop the harassment, and the futile outcome of those efforts often increased the sabotage attempts against the individual. The perpetrator’s actions “negatively influenced group dynamics, perceptions and behaviors”, and ultimately, the issue was only “resolved” by silencing the victim through fear, intimidation, stigmatization, or exhaustion (Hutchinson et al., 2010, p.