Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 23, 1993 TAG: 9312230044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
Most of the offenses in the Canadian survey involved suggestive looks and sexual remarks. But some also said their patients brushed or touched them, or gave them inappropriate gifts or pressured them for dates.
The doctors said patients' alcohol and drug use probably played a role in many of their advances, and less than one-quarter of the physicians rated sexual harassment as a serious problem.
Nonetheless, the authors of the study said they believe harassment of women doctors "is widespread and troublesome."
"Female doctors are treated primarily as women, not as physicians, by many of their male patients," they wrote. "The vulnerability inherent in their sex seems in many cases to override their power as doctors, leaving female physicians open to sexual harassment."
The survey was conducted by Dr. Susan P. Phillips of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and psychologist Margaret S. Schneider of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto.
They mailed questionnaires to 599 of the 1,064 women family practitioners in Ontario. The results, published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, were based on the responses of 417 doctors, or 39 percent of the total in the province.
Just more than half of the women reported suggestive looks and sexual remarks from patients. About one-quarter said they had experienced suggestive gestures or offers of dates, or received inappropriate gifts.
Nearly one-third said patients had exposed themselves in sexually suggestive ways. Four percent complained of "grossly inappropriate touching," such as fondling a breast.
Among the gifts received were G-strings, flowers, tapes of love songs and, in one case, a deceased wife's clothes.
by CNB