#MeToo, page 18
Shocked and disgusted, Brooke could only muster a ‘no’. Despite her feelings she continued to give him the care he required. And she didn’t report it to the in-charge nurse.
The protective instinct rose in me like a roar.
Then this story: a patient had said to Brooke, ‘I bet you don’t like to be touched or caressed at all, do you?’ This was followed by explicit details about his sexual relationship with his partner. Brooke felt deeply uncomfortable. When she told her in-charge nurse, her response was, ‘Did he grope you? No? Well, then, how is that being inappropriate?’
I was gut-punched and furious to the core. I had a sudden sense of clarity. My little cousin had been sexually harassed. And it had not been dealt with properly.
I recognised that I, too, had been sexually assaulted by a patient. In fact, I realised nursing work is rife with it. I started to talk with my colleagues. I felt that, by naming it, I was breaking an unspoken code. One of my colleagues agreed. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘everyone has a story, multiple stories. But they won’t call it sexual harassment. Instead they’ll say, “Oh, they have x/y/z condition, don’t take it personally.” Or maybe at best, they’ll request a male nurse.’
In this predominantly female workforce (more than 90 per cent of Australian nurses are female), there is an insidious culture, an unspoken expectation that we will quietly put up with being treated this way. We brush things off. We take a joke. We certainly don’t argue with patients. We keep the peace and provide patient-centred care. It means we don’t identify the sexual violence directed at us.
We don’t deal with how it affects us.
I work as a nurse educator now, running regular sexual health and diversity workshops with health professionals. We discuss why it’s important for us to talk about patients’ sexual health. During a recent workshop, one nurse, Nikita, put up her hand. ‘What about when a patient talks about sex with you, but inappropriately?’
It was a red beacon for me. Something had happened to Nikita that she wasn’t trained to deal with. I asked the group, ‘Has anyone else in the room had an experience like that?’
There were more than thirty health professionals in the room and almost everyone put up their hand.
Afterwards I approached Nikita, saying I wanted to do more and could she write her story down?
‘I’ve got a diary entry,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to give you that?’
Later, she brought it to me. ‘I was going to type it up but I just couldn’t look at it again.’
In my hand were photocopied hand-written pages, a private, after-work scrawl that began, ‘Dear Diary . . .’
She’d written the minutia of the ward, details of staff and logistics, and a nice-looking male patient in his seventies making inappropriate comments but needing to be showered:
So I explained to him that because he’d had a fall (hence why he’d come into hospital), that I’d sit him on the edge of the bed, let him stand up and see how he was on his feet – then depending on how that went we could walk to the bathroom or I’d get a commode.
So we walked to the shower and he was safe but required assistance from me. So I held on to his weaker side and we walked to the bathroom and I sat him in the chair and explained to him what I was going to do: ‘I’m just taking off your gown . . . just turning on the water . . .’ etc.
So I was washing him and getting him to wash where he could and he started with the inappropriate comments again – saying how pretty I am and how he wanted me to touch him personally and that he wanted to shower me next – to which I explained that that was inappropriate and not why I was here. I ignored it, just trying to focus on the job at hand.
Without warning he stood up and I freaked out as I thought he was going to fall and I stepped in front of him and held his shoulders and told him to sit back down so that he didn’t fall. That’s when he grabbed my lower back and was holding his hands on my bum and legs trying to pull himself onto me – saying, ‘I want to feel your body on mine’ and telling me to touch him.
I put force on his shoulders and firmly told him to sit down again and he did.
I was shaky with shock and just told him not to do that again, turned off the water, dried him quickly, changed him into a gown, underwear, socks, dried the floor and walked him back to bed.
The in-charge nurse was in a meeting, so Nikita worked until the end of her shift before reporting the incident. The in-charge nurse responded quite supportively. She asked a doctor to speak to the patient and organised Nikita a counselling appointment and a taxi voucher home.
Nikita talked about how the nurse, the doctor and the counsellor put the onus back on her. They all asked, ‘Why didn’t you press the emergency button?’ ‘Why didn’t you call for help?’
This comment especially having been mentioned a couple of times made me feel like I did something wrong. I thought it a bit of a poor response, like I wouldn’t have reached out if I could have.
The phone counsellor was particularly bad.
I spoke to an older male psychologist who didn’t talk to me about what happened . . . I feel like once I told him what happened he didn’t know what to say . . . also said, ‘Oh, if he had dementia, well then –’ and made out like that was a good excuse. He also said, ‘Why didn’t you push the emergency button and call for help?’ – I explained I was in a closed room in the corner and the button was out of reach and if I had stepped away from the patient he would have fallen.
After that call I felt worse than before.
With Nikita’s journal in my hand, I felt an even bigger sense of responsibility. Nikita was a junior nurse who had barely been on the wards for a year.
In my role, I supervise junior nurses. About twenty of my nurses are rostered at any time in a rotating pool across eighteen wards. This means they have immediate supervisors in the ward, but they also have me. I check in with them. I look at handover sheets and talk through patients’ requirements.
‘Have you had your break? Are there any unfamiliar tasks I could help you with – venipuncture, stoma bag change, PICC removal?’ They can page me at any time and my job is often as much pastoral care as it is education. I am someone to talk to when the regular systems aren’t clear.
I’m someone who hears stories. A health assistant had her breasts grabbed by a patient. A nurse had to sit by a man considered an ‘absconding risk’ who said explicit sexual things to her all night. And this is just scratching the surface.
A 1993 study in Ontario showed that more than 75 per cent of female physicians reported being sexually harassed by patients. Now take away the status of ‘doctor’ and add a series of both deeply intimate and ostensibly menial tasks, and imagine how the statistic might rise.
Yes, some (but not all!) perpetrators have a disinhibiting condition that might explain their behaviour. But they mostly don’t behave the same way in the presence of male doctors or nurses. It’s much more likely to happen when the curtains are pulled, or in the bathroom, or when there are no other staff nearby. Which is often. Despite their condition, these men know how to pick their moment. Part of them still knows when a woman is alone. And it’s very rare to hear of female patients with similar conditions sexually harassing people.
This behaviour is not about their condition. It’s about a long entrenched culture of men believing that women’s purpose is to provide for their needs, including their sexual needs, whether or not they are interested. It is about men feeling that they can use sex to assert their power. Because the hospital bed can be a place where men feel they need to reclaim power.
As a nurse who has worked for thirteen years in hospitals I firmly believe in respectful, non-judgemental, patient-centred care. This belief drives how I operate at work on a daily basis. These men, some of whom are very ill, deserve high-quality care. They deserve to be treated with respect.
But the women who care for them also deserve respect. We deserve systems in place to protect us while we do our job.
Sophia was another of my junior nurses and recently I spent some hours working with her, laughing with a patient who had been trampled by a cow and chatting to another who had been recently released from prison.
Just after her break she said, ‘I want to talk to you about some really awful sexual harassment stuff that happened to me the other day.’ As she started to tell me the story, I had a sinking feeling of familiarity. This. Again. We needed to report it.
We were standing at the nurses’ station, an open galley of benchtops and filing shelves between wards. Here, staff perform a busy dance, trying to access patients’ paper files or one of the two computers. Five to ten hospital staff: nurses, surgeons, physios, Occupational Therapists or pharmacists might be there at any one time. Everyone needs to record vital signs, chart medications, check dosages or plan care.
It’s not the ideal place to write about your own sexual harassment. But I opened a Word doc, pulled up a chair, and asked Sophia to write everything down. ‘I’m going to look after your patients while you do this,’ I told her. She started to type.
Sophia had been targeted by a patient for a whole shift. Each time she returned to him his comments continued: ‘It’s lonely down here without you, you know.’ ‘Can you give me a cuddle?’ ‘Can you get into bed with me?’ ‘Just make sure you come in often so I can look at you.’ ‘When you come behind the curtain, can you remove some clothing?’ Sophia told him to stop, that his behaviour wasn’t appropriate. He didn’t stop.
When she needed to roll him over he tried to grab her hips.
Sophia went to the in-charge nurse, who replied that it wasn’t a new issue. The patient had been sexually inappropriate to other nurses. Sophia hadn’t been warned. The in-charge nurse offered to join Sophia so she wasn’t alone ‘for the longer tasks’.
This didn’t stop the patient from following her with his eyes whenever she walked past, winking at her while slowly licking his straw.
And it wasn’t just the patient. His father, who was capable of caring for some of his basic needs, asked Sophia to do them instead: ‘He just wanted you to do it,’ he’d said, looking her up and down. ‘A hot young thing like you, I can see why.’
She’d finished with the Word document, and I joined her to help log the incident online. The drop-down menus kept failing to drop down and then the whole thing crashed three or four times and we had to re-enter every detail. Sophia’s patients needed her. I gave up on the incident report tool and forwarded Sophia’s words in an email to the Director of Nursing (the DoN).
The DoN, a white-haired woman in her sixties, has worked her way up, through years of nursing, to this leadership role in a big hospital. She has sparkling eyes and a ready laugh, but her staff say, ‘If she asks you do to it, you do it.’
I wasn’t working the next day, but Sophia told me what happened. The DoN came to see her on the ward to explain how she was responding to the incident. The DoN went to speak with the patient personally, asking a senior male registrar to join her to make it clear that this wasn’t just ‘women’s business’.
The registrar didn’t think a conversation would be useful. ‘It’s his delirium,’ he said.
But the DoN was firm, pointing to Sophia’s story. ‘I want you to read this again, very slowly and carefully, and then tell me it was just delirium.’
The registrar agreed to speak with the patient.
After that, the inappropriate behaviour stopped. Entirely. This intervention had been effective.
Sophia told me one other thing about that conversation. She said the DoN had apologised to her personally. Apologised not only that this had happened, but for her generation. For accepting decades of the behaviour, taking it on the chin, and not interrupting the culture of sexual harassment sooner. ‘My generation has a lot to answer for,’ she said.
Part of me was furious that here was another woman, apologising for the way men have treated her. And part of me felt a wave of teary relief. Someone in a position of power was responding. We were going to fix this.
And there’s a lot to be fixed (smashing the patriarchy, anyone?) but let’s start with this. We deserve our experiences to be acknowledged.
Brooke, Nikita, Sophia, I am so deeply sorry that this was done to you. You responded with professionalism and dignity. But those feelings you told me about – your disgust, your fear, those shrivelling, icky, powerless feelings – there’s a real reason for them. Let’s start calling it by name.
Australian nurses are being sexually harassed by our patients.
And it’s not part of our job.
telling (on) you
mum it wasnt even dark
outside the Galbraiths
mum I promise we werent late
getting back from the shops
mum he stopped his van so quick
it made smoke off the tyres
mum his radio was that loud
we didnt even hear
when he got right behind us
arms wide like a gorilla
his mouth making ooo-ooo-ooo
mum we didnt look both ways
when we ran across the road
Jenny pushed me
into the hedge by the church
mum he slapped at the bushes
hell hard like he was mad
we crouched there for ages
holding our breaths
mum I wanted to run but
Jenny shook her head
mum we stayed there forever
in case
sorry mum to tell you
thats why we late, this time
but theres other times I dont
tell you about
like when I’m going to school, and men
poke out
pink things from their pants
or the carriage gets packed
and they rub
themselves on me
I dont tell you mum cos
theres nowhere
to go, and you told me always
to give up
my seat
for the grown-ups
Helen Thurloe writes poems, novels, and essays; many of which highlight forgotten, overlooked, or silenced voices. Her work explores situations that are usually gendered, largely hidden and always unfair. Helen’s debut novel, Promising Azra, is a contemporary tale about forced child marriage in Australia. Her current novels-in-progress are both historical fiction; one concerning serial wives in malarial Britain, and another about the life of a rural wet-nurse. Helen’s poems are about everything else. www.helenthurloe.com.au
Nicole Hayes is an award-winning author and part of all-female AFL podcast The Outer Sanctum (ABC). Her debut novel, The Whole of My World, is an AFL #MeToo novel that helped inspire The Outer Sanctum and From the Outer: Footy like you’ve never heard it. Her YA fiction has been shortlisted for WA and NSW Premiers’ Literary Awards, and are CBCA Notable books. Her second novel, One True Thing, won the Children’s Peace Literature Prize.
My Place
I’m standing in the aptly named Victory room, people crying and laughing and cheering amid this seething mass of brown and gold, those striking colours as familiar to me as my own skin. It’s September in Melbourne and the soft-leather Sherrin is our god. Outside, that blue, blue spring sky battles distant streaks of cloud and another spectacle continues on the field as a premiership match rages, but I only have eyes for what’s unfolding in front of me. The curtain raiser has been fought and won and the jubilant players are holding the cup aloft for we fans to cheer. This holiest of grails. This yes in a sea of nos. I’m clutching a flute of champagne, my Hawks scarf dangling awkwardly, my voice hoarse from screaming. Every time I take a sip, the scarf catches on my hand, and I’m forced to flip it over my shoulder, only for it to fall loose again. I don’t have the presence of mind to set down my glass, nor will I remove the scarf, despite the throbbing heat of the room, sucked dry of breathable air.
This is what winning feels like, and I’m soaking up every second.
I have done this before – this celebration of someone else’s talent, someone else’s achievement, all in the name of the jersey they’re wearing. The colours I chose, or not really chose, because that’s how allegiance works in Melbourne – you inherit or are bestowed, and must live a life committed to these colours, win, lose or draw, for the rest of your dying days. The brown and gold have served me well in my lifetime. Have done more winning than losing. And I’ve been to this dance many times already – a gluttonous number for any single human. When I say their name, I dip my head in shame at the abundance. A kind of apology to those teams with shinier colours but thinner success.
But this time is different, in subtle and complicated ways – and in one obvious way too. They’re all women. The players I’m toasting are female. And they’re young enough to be my daughters.
This is a thing I never thought would happen. A moment so foreign to my limited expectations that I step aside to breathe, press a hand to my tear-blurred eyes.
My place.
I’m a little kid – seven, maybe eight. The metal smell of mud damp in the air, grass spongy underfoot. A chorus of tooting horns and screaming parents rewards the full forward for his accuracy, and I’m on the boundary, watching on. Always watching on.
Except at training, week after week. Except at practice matches when sometimes they let me play. (‘What’s the harm? It doesn’t count anyway.’) Except in their backyard, or the post-game kick-to-kick, or the end-of-season parents versus boys scratch game. The coach encourages me to join in – tells me not to be shy. ‘The boys try harder when you’re there,’ he says. I’m blushingly pleased until he adds, ‘They hate being beaten by a girl.’
Year after year, I show up at practices, at training, at games. On the field for those precious minutes when they’ll let me. On the boundary when they won’t.
