April 2018

Sexual behaviours between health and care practitioners: where does the boundary lie?

Back

This piece of research was a good example of a client needing to gain a better understanding of how other people saw things.

Here’s how the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social explain the context of the research: 

“We have observed that sexual misconduct between health and care practitioners may be treated less seriously by regulators’ fitness to practise panels than overstepping boundaries with patients. We believe that this is a serious issue with the potential to impact patient safety and public confidence. We commissioned research to find out what the public and professionals think about this and asked them ‘where does the boundary lie?'”

Reference: Sexual misconduct research report

In other words, they (very wisely) wanted to check that their take on the issue was not completely out of kilter with that of the public and professionals.

You can download the report at the bottom of this page. Alternatively, here’s a short film the Authority made to publicise the work.