Nurse Harassment: A Forgotten Issue

In the clinical setting of nursing, nurses play a specific role. Most nurses are female and as a part of their duty, perform hard work and face stressful situations, problems, and risks. An important problem worth mentioning is the harassment of nurses, an expected problem as most nurses are female. However, unfortunately, this has become a forgotten issue. In developing countries such as Thailand, newspapers often report cases of nurse harassment. Many of these are cases of serious harassment and even murder (for example, the famous Nuanchawee case of nurse harassment and murder in Thailand, which is documented at Mahidol University, medical museum in Bangkok, Thailand). Nevertheless, there are only a few scientific reports on this issue. Fute et al. recently reported a prevalence of as high as 13.02% of sexual harassment of nurses in Ethiopia (1). In another report from Malaysia, Suhaila and Rampal stated that, “the prevalence of sexual harassment among registered nurses in the workplace was high and self-perception profile of the victims of sexual harassment was the main contributing factor to the problem” (2). Fallahi Khoshknab et al. have also reported a high prevalence of violence against Iranian healthcare workers, including nurses (3). Noteworthy is the fact that although several guidelines are available for working in a clinical settings, there is scarcity of specific instructions pertaining to the protection of the workforce (4). To be specific, there is no clear protocol for prevention of sexual harassment of nurses, an important issue for the nursing society to combat! To address this problem, the author suggests the following solutions: (a) a good security system in hospitals, such as closed circuit television, must be established; (b) nurses should be trained on selfprotection against any harassment; (c) an instruction should be enforced that forbids the traveling of nurses on duty to a secluded place, especially at night; and (d) legal control and penalty for cases of harassment must be strengthened.