The Issue of Sexual Assault by Healthcare Professionals: An Essay

This essay delves into the disturbing issue of sexual assault committed by healthcare providers, highlighting cases involving both female staff and patients. It addresses the abuse of power dynamics within healthcare organizations, where individuals in positions of authority exploit their subordinates, often targeting those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The essay also explores instances of doctors and medical staff exploiting patients, including inappropriate touching during examinations, particularly targeting vulnerable children. The author emphasizes the importance of raising awareness and empowering individuals to recognize and respond to such situations, suggesting measures such as ensuring accompaniment during check-ups, demanding the presence of female staff, and prioritizing same-sex doctors when possible. Ultimately, the essay underscores the need for accountability and justice for victims, as well as proactive measures to prevent future incidents.

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Sexual assault by healthcare providers
Doctors are the most respected and responsible citizen of not only in our country but all around
the world. It is considered as a noble profession. Sometimes they are considered as a second god
by their patients and their family. Health is the biggest wealth for a human being and all the
doctors around the world helped us to make it fit, good and active. We all know that doctor plays
a major part to keep us safe and healthy but other medical professionals are also equally
responsible for our good health and happy life. When we get good behaviour and good treatment
from all of the medical professionals along with the doctors, we personally feeling very lucky
and instantly consider them as our family. But all of the people around the world are not kind
and compassionate like we thought about what doctors and medical professionals must be
(Varma et al. 2015). According to LA Times, Sometimes the inhuman and unauthentic
behaviours of doctors and medical professionals make them worse than a beast. There are many
cases not only in our country but all around the world where doctors and other existing medical
professionals in that healthcare sector got accused of some sexual assaulting cases. In those
sectors, victims are generally the female staffs and sometimes the patients also. These kinds of
incidents happened within the healthcare unit as powerful wants to take advantages of their
position and power and want to exploit their female subordinates (Berry and Rutledge 2016). In
those cases, they assaulting their subordinates randomly and after that, they blackmailed them
also. The subordinates forced to listen to their boss as most of them are worked because of
money and financial security. In some cases, we can see that those powerful actually targets to
those employees who are needy and belongs to a lower socioeconomic background. Just because
of these incidents the employees suffered very badly as they have not left any option in their life
apart from being quiet. Mostly the managerial positioned people did these kinds of unethical
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things with their employees to take advantages of their employees and to fulfil their cheap sex
drive also. Those people are the meanest people of our society. Those people must be punished.
The employees who get affected mentally, physically and economically by those people need to
open their mouth against their dirty works and dirty minds also (Madera, Lee and Dawson 2019).
Sometimes the doctors and other medical staffs exploit their patients also. If we consider a health
care centre as an organization or a company then the patients are the customers who went there
to receive some good quality services and doctors and other medical staffs are considered as the
service provider of that organization (Crawford-Jakubiak et al. 2017). For an organization, a
customer must be considered as the god for the service providers. Though this medical
profession is bit different but still disrespecting the patients will always be avoided on the
priority service. In order to check those patients, those doctors touched them the inappropriate
way. An adult still can fight with these conditions but a child cannot as they are innocent. These
kind of unethical treatments affect them physically and mentally (Greenbaum, Crawford-
Jakubiak and Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect 2015). Most of the dishonest doctor targets
a child to do these unethical behaviours as they will never understand and also they can easily
convince them with their way conduct.
There are many people all over the world who have this kind of cheap and dirty mentality. We
cannot punish all of them instead we can create and spread awareness among the common people
all over the world. In such cases people need to conscious about some agendas which are:
 If they feel somehow the doctor or the medical professionals touched them the
inappropriate way they just need to walk out of that room (Sigurdardottir and
Halldorsdottir 2018).
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 Someone should always accompany her during the checkup or full body examination
time.
 As we all know all of the examinations are held in a private place thus the patient need to
demand some other female staffs to keep their position safe.
 It is not necessary that only females are harassed by male doctors all the time. There are
many ill mentality lady doctors present all around the world. Thus in those case, males
need to be very careful about the physical approach of those doctors.
 Sometimes people suffered from some disease which arises from their private body parts
need to be treated as early as possible. In such cases, they need to go to the respective
doctors for a detailed check-up. In such cases they need to follow some things during the
examination which are, doctors need to wear gloves before they touch those parts of the
body.
 Mostly we need to choose the same sex doctor in such cases that would be the safest
option for all of us.
References:
Berry, K.M. and Rutledge, C.M., 2016. Factors that influence women to disclose sexual assault
history to health care providers. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, 45(4),
pp.553-564.
Crawford-Jakubiak, J.E., Alderman, E.M., Leventhal, J.M. and Committee on Child Abuse and
Neglect, 2017. Care of the adolescent after an acute sexual assault. Pediatrics, 139(3),
p.e20164243.
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Greenbaum, J., Crawford-Jakubiak, J.E. and Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect, 2015.
Child sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation: health care needs of
victims. Pediatrics, 135(3), pp.566-574.
Madera, J.M., Lee, L. and Dawson, M., 2019. Sexual harassment and sexual assault training:
Consider the industry. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 12(1), pp.96-99.
Sigurdardottir, S. and Halldorsdottir, S., 2018. Screaming body and silent healthcare providers:
A case study with a childhood sexual abuse survivor. International journal of environmental
research and public health, 15(1), p.94.
Varma, S., Gillespie, S., McCracken, C. and Greenbaum, V.J., 2015. Characteristics of child
commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking victims presenting for medical care in the
United States. Child abuse & neglect, 44, pp.98-105.
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-sexual-assault-harassment-health-20181005-
story.html
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:i_NI93oWqT8J:https://www.latimes.com/
local/lanow/la-me-ln-hospital-sexual-assault-lawsuit-20180223-story.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in
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