HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, May 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Nearly 1 in 4 hospital doctors are mistreated at work by patients, visitors and other doctors, and female doctors are nearly two times more likely than male doctors to face this abuse, a new study reveals.
“All members of the health care team share the responsibility to mitigate mistreatment,” said senior study author Dr. Mickey Trockel, a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and director of Evidence Based Innovation for the Stanford WellMD/WellPhD Center.
“Those wielding leadership influence hold particular responsibility to establish policies and expectations of civility and respect from all members of the healthcare community — including patients and visitors,” Trockel added.
In the study, researchers surveyed just over 1,500 doctors on the clinical faculty at Stanford University School of Medicine in September/October 2020 and found that 23.4% reported mistreatment at work during the past year.
Patients and visitors were the main culprits — reported by about 17% of physicians and accounting for more than 70% of all events — followed by other physicians.
The most frequent forms of mistreatment were: verbal, reported by 21.5% of respondents: sexual harassment (5.4%); and physical intimidation or abuse (5.2%).
Women were two times more likely (31%) to report mistreatment than men (15%), and were more likely to encounter sexual harassment and verbal mistreatment.
Mistreatment also varied by race but the number of respondents wasn’t large enough to conduct a detailed analysis by race/ethnicity, according to the authors of the study. The findings