Your Stories

It is a sad reality that I can’t write about my experiences with inappropriate behaviour, sexual harassment, sexual behaviours or even physical assault (of a sexual nature in this case) from patients because where would I start? I’m not talking about the frightened dementia patient who grabs out or says something inappropriate, but people who have complete control over their behaviour. Even as a student (many years ago), I quickly realised this was “part of the job” and there was no point in even reporting it because it was never taken seriously by those above. Examples range from inappropriate remarks, to masturbation in front of me/over the phone, to gropes/touching. Obviously, that isn’t “part of the job” but is very common. However, the one experience I can describe (and still makes me sick to my stomach) is one where it was a colleague (and mentor). He was known to be a (shall we say horrible person) and he always made you cringe and the whole shift would be apologising to patients/families for his rudeness. But on this particular shift, things got extra weird. He’d previously called me “sexy” and had asked to take photos of me in uniform, which I had of course declined – it is worth noting this was in front of other colleagues who remained painfully silent. But here we were, sitting on scene having discharged the patient, and he starts to make comments on my body. He offers to buy me clothes from the shop we’ve just been in to, so long as he can “see you in them sexy” and kept pushing me to accept his advances. The inappropriate comments continued all shift, as did the ‘accidentally walking into me’ (including hands touching me by “accident”) in the back of the ambulance, always whilst I was providing patient care, probably knowing I would almost certainly say nothing and carry on. I was trapped. Literally trapped in a tin box for 12 hours with a man who, as a student, had extreme power over me even in the context of being universally disliked by others. People had previously witnessed his inappropriate comments and said nothing so I felt completely powerless to say anything. Turns out my fears on speaking up were right, because I opened up to a trusted colleague a few weeks later and all I got was “well that’s X for you, don’t let it bother you”, the same dismissal as I’d got used to for patient events. Even all these years later, this makes me shudder and fearful. The culture in my former workplaces around sexual misconduct, from words to actions, is abhorrent. It is normalised, accepted and victims or survivors are gaslighted and left without compassion or support.

During admissions to medical school a female candidate was rated really highly by most of the panel apart from the lead admissions tutor (a man) who refused to rate her highly despite her objectively performing well as he didn’t want to admit ‘any more shy girls, as they always have problems’.