ABSTRACT
Physician impairment is a critical issue in health care setting. Physicians have an exaggerated risk of psychosocial problems. The most common psychiatric problems in the physician can be isolated psychiatric conditions or substance abuse. Physician impairment due to psychosocial problems, substance abuse, burnout or accidental health care hazards can result in adverse personal, social and professional consequences. Due to the nature of the work, physician impairment can result in significant compromise in patients’ health. It is absolute necessary to have a definitive set of programs within each health care facility to target physician impairment preserving the functionality and optimal health output of health care provider and the receiver.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: This research intends to discuss sexual harassment within the doctor-patient relationship based on four parameters: doctor's characteristics, accuser's characteristics, accusation characteristics, and the evaluation by the Medicine Council of São Paulo. METHOD: It is a descriptive, quantitative approach using a retrospective documental analysis. Studied subjects were doctors who were allegedly engaged in sexual harassment. This analysis considered all accusations made from January 2000 to December 2005 (n=150). RESULTS: For this type of sexual abuse, there was a prevalence of male professionals (96.6 percent) who committed abuse against female patients (90.3 percent) during adulthood (77.7 percent). The mean age of the accused was 46.87 years, ranging from 30-76 years, concentrated between 46-75 years. The intrinsic difficulty of understanding sexual harassment by a professional constrained ethical evaluation of the cases, with 24.1 percent of the cases being considered proceeding charges by the professional council. When the cases were recognized as proceeding, they were either filed (88.2 percent) or were considered to be ethical infringement (11.8 percent) becoming Professional Ethical Process (PEP). In the majority of proceeding cases (87 percent), there was a Police Occurrence Report enclosed. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The incidence of sexual abuse by professionals was independent of education, as the accused professionals came from a large variety of medical colleges, without significant differences related to institution. The predominance of accusations against older professionals may occur due to the frail personality structure that allows professional acting out. Objective evidence is very important in ethical evaluations compared to psychological and subjective evidence.