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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.