Nearly one in 10 NHS staff in England report sexual harassment at work last year, staff survey finds

Some 9% of NHS staff in England were sexually harassed while at work last year, the annual NHS staff survey has reported.1

For the first time the survey asked employees if they had been the target of unwanted sexual behaviour from patients, members of the public, or colleagues in the previous year. The inclusion of the new questions followed a joint investigation by The BMJ and the Guardian last year, which revealed a huge number of sexual safety incidents reported to NHS trusts in England and a lack of dedicated policies at many trusts for dealing with sexual assault and harassment.2

Of more than 670 000 NHS staff who responded to the new question in the survey, 9% said that they had been the target of at least one incident of unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature in the workplace from patients in the past 12 months. The highest responses were from ambulance staff: 23% said that they had experienced such behaviour, which included offensive or inappropriate sexual conversation, including …