Prevalence of sexual harassment among female medical staff in Four Khartoum State tertiary hospitals

Abstract

Introduction: workplace harassment is hypothesized to cause a psychological impact on the welfare of the individual. The aim of this study is to estimate the prevalence of sexual harassment among female medical staff in Khartoum state tertiary hospitals.

Methods: this is a cross-sectional hospital-based study in hospitals of Khartoum, Omdurman and North Khartoum. Our study population comprised female medical staff working in the outpatient clinics, emergency clinics, referred clinics and wards. The data was collected by online Google form self-administered questionnaire. The first part includes demographic information. The second part involved information regarding sexual harassment. The third part obtained information about the psychological status (effect) after harassment. The questionnaire was adopted and utilized from previous studies.

Results: in this study, 325 participants were recruited. Among the participants, 51.4% were doctors, majority (81.2%) of the study population were single. The mean age was 26.29 and SD 3.865. Forty percent (40%) stated they had been sexually harassed at work. Forty-five percent (45%) reported the harassment occurred more than 3 times and 46.4% reported loss of desire for work. Action taken for investigation was only reported by 5.4%. The logistic regression revealed that female doctors were 1.45 times more prone to sexual harassment. Also, medical staff with low socioeconomic status were 83.2% chance not sexually harassed.

Conclusion: the prevalence of sexual harassment among female medical staff was high. Doctors were more vulnerable to sexual harassment. And, the reported incidents were scarce.