It’s not just bosses who harass health workers: Hospitals start addressing patients’ ‘egregious’ behavior
There's growing awareness that it’s not just bosses and colleagues who sexually harass health care workers. Often, it’s the patients who are doing the harassing.
At Mayo Clinic last year, a male patient groped a female doctor in the presence of several other staff members. She immediately notified hospital administrators using a new reporting system, and the patient was terminated from the physician’s practice within 48 hours.
Before this reporting process was created in 2017, the renowned Rochester, Minn., hospital had no procedures for how to deal with patients who harass staff — or even language addressing the issue in hospital guidelines.
The patient’s “behavior was egregious,” but if the
