Organizational Climate Related to Patient-Perpetrated Sexual Harassment: VA Primary Care Provider Perceptions.

Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 0230027 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1537-1948 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00257079 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Med Care Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: Hagerstown, MD : Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Original Publication: Philadelphia, etc., Lippincott.

Sexual Harassment*/statistics & numerical data ; Sexual Harassment*/psychology ; United States Department of Veterans Affairs*/organization & administration ; Organizational Culture* ; Primary Health Care*/organization & administration ; Attitude of Health Personnel*; Humans ; United States ; Female ; Male ; Adult ; Middle Aged ; Professional-Patient Relations

Background: Patient-perpetrated sexual harassment toward health care providers is common and adversely affects provider well-being, workforce outcomes, and patient care. Organizational climate for sexual harassment-shared perceptions about an organization's practices, policies, and procedures-is one of the strongest predictors of harassment prevalence. We conducted a pilot survey assessing provider perceptions of the Veterans Health Administration (VA)'s climate related to patient-perpetrated sexual harassment.
Research Design: Responding providers completed a survey assessing: (1) experiences with patient-perpetrated sexual harassment; (2) beliefs about VA's responses to patient-perpetrated sexual harassment of staff; and (3) perceptions of VA's organizational climate related to sexual harassment for each of 4 perpetrator-target pairings (patient-perpetrated harassment of staff, patient-perpetrated harassment of patients, staff-perpetrated harassment of staff, and staff-perpetrated harassment of patients).
Subjects: Respondents included 105 primary care providers (staff physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants) at 15 facilities in the VA Women's Health Practice-Based Research Network.
Results: Seventy-one percent of responding providers reported experiencing patient-perpetrated sexual harassment in the past 6 months. Respondent perceptions of VA's responses to patient-perpetrated harassment of staff were mixed (eg, indicating that VA creates an environment where harassment is safe to discuss but that it fails to offer adequate guidance for responding to harassment). Respondents rated organizational climate related to patient-perpetrated harassment of staff as significantly more negative compared with climate related to other perpetrator-target pairings.
Conclusions: Future work with representative samples is needed to corroborate these findings, which have potential ramifications for VA's ongoing efforts to create a safe, inclusive environment of care.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2024 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

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Date Created: 20241014 Date Completed: 20241108 Latest Revision: 20241108

20241114

10.1097/MLR.0000000000002075

39401176