Sexual harassment between doctors — workplace interventions to prevent and minimise harms
Published in February 2026, an Australian National University and University of Glasgow co-edited collaborative research anthology tackles sexual harms between doctors.
One-third of junior doctors have experienced sexual harassment and abuse (SHA) within their healthcare system. Now, Sexual harassment between doctors: healing medical cultures around the world — a collaborative research anthology from Australian National University (ANU) and University of Glasgow (UofG) — has been published, bringing together global target experiences and diverse approaches with the aim of helping to understand and tackle the root causes of SHA in medicine, and find potential solutions.
By prioritising the voices of targets — whose experience helps to inform an understanding of a complex problem — the reasoning is not only to help break the silence, but offer potential solutions in discrete cultural contexts. With contributing authors in locations from Austria to Zambia, the book spans multiple languages, sociocultural contexts, and academic disciplines — offering unique globally contextualised perspectives, expert analysis and commentary.
“We wanted to bring the insights of multiple disciplines and multiple contexts into one space so those of us involved in the complex problem of sexual abuse in medicine could examine the problem from multiple perspectives,” co-editor ANU’s Associate Professor Louise Stone said. “We sincerely believe that it is only by engaging with the complexity of the problem that contextually appropriate solutions can be found across the world.”
In the anthology, key ways to help prevent SHA in healthcare settings are identified. These include interventions that can be made during selection and training; changes to the nature and structure of medical work and the way hierarchy is managed; changes to the management of learning environments to ensure doctors in training are safe; and an exploration of the role of men in allyship, leading and supporting teams in the prevention and management of sexual harassment.
“Sexual harms between doctors is a complex problem, but not unsolvable,” co-editor UofG’s Professor Rosalind Searle said. Based in UofG’s Adam Smith Business School, Searle is working with NHS England and health and social care regulators to educate and introduce workplace interventions to prevent, reduce the impact of and minimise the harms of sexual harassment.
“This is an institutional issue,” Searle added. “Medicine is a patriarch, where your means to progress within your career depends on somebody else endorsing you. That therefore allows people to exploit others unnecessarily, promote those that favour them and shut out people that challenge their behaviours.” Other editors of the anthology are, from ANU, Elizabeth Waldron, Christine Phillips and Kirsty Douglas.
Published by Cambridge University Press, to understand how systems adapt, as well as revealing the systems that enable abuse to occur in large healthcare institutions, Sexual harassment between doctors: healing medical cultures around the world brings into one place global expertise and experience from law, medical regulation, management, human rights, gender theory and therapy.
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