SEXUAL HARASSMENT FACED BY FEMALE NURSING STUDENTS DURING CLINICAL PRACTICES

Nursing students may be exposed to all types of violence in clinical practice places. Aim: The aim of this paper was to assess the sexual harassment faced by female nursing students during the clinical practices. Material and Method: Descriptive design was used. Subjects: All female nursing students, who were enrolled in the first and second classes of the academic year 2014-2015 at the Faculty of Nursing, Sohag University. Their number was (226). Setting: Faculty of Nursing, Sohag University. A structured interviewing questionnaire sheet was used to collect necessary data. Results: The majority of students in clinical areas were exposed to sexual harassment in the form of sexual words, calls/messages and unwanted touches, by the patients' relatives/friends. The causes of harassment were moral deterioration, and fear of scandal was the reason for not-reporting from student's side. The students also reported that the harassment had an impact on the level of work satisfaction, their families and social life and their somatic and psychological state. The reactions adopted by sixty percent of the target nurses toward this phenomenon were negligence, which puts limits on and notify the higher authority. The nurses′ strategies to face the harassment were documenting each incident and initiating legal action, conviction of sexual abuses, reinforce a heavy penalty on sexual harasser, improve nurses′ image in mass media by about ninety percent. Conclusion: Sexual harassment among students was high in clinical practices, and had an effect physically, psychologically and on all aspects of their lives, and may be a causative factor in the attrition of nurses from the nursing profession, in addition to poor work performance. Recommendations: Health care facilities should adopt policies and develop strategies which aim at to minimizing harassment to create an enthusiastic and safe working environment within it, with intensive studies in this regard on different categories of the nurses.