Intimidation, Harassment and Discrimination in Internship and Residency in a Teaching Hospital in South-West Nigeria

Abstract

Introduction: Intimidation, harassment and discrimination (IHD) occur in all organizations with higher proportion of the experience in the health care establishments without the exception of medical profession. Evidence from the studies in different part of the world showed that 42% to 93% of different cadres of medical profession have been victims. The study was undertaken to assess the pattern as well as the determinants of intimidation, harassment and discrimination among interns and residents in LAUTECH Teaching Hospital Ogbomoso, Nigeria. Methodology: A descriptive cross sectional design was used and all the 82 interns and resident doctors at all departments at the time of this study were included. A self administered semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17 was used for the analysis. Level of significant was set at 5% for the bivariate data analysis. Results: A total of 27 (32.9%) doctors reported that they had experienced IHD in the last 6 months even though almost all respondents, 77 (93.9%) reported to have experienced it at one time or the other in the past. The type of IHD experienced last ranged from verbal abuse (56.1%), humiliation (15.9%), deprivation of right such as leave (12.2%) and others. The primary basis for IHD was perceived to be hierarchical attitude (73.2%), followed by personal dislike (13.4%) and religion (6.1%). It was observed that there was statistically significant association regarding specialty (p=0.048), level of training (p=0.036) and years spent in training (p=0.034) whereas there was no significant association with respect to gender (p=0.741), age (p=0.521) and marital status (p=0.239). Conclusion: It is hoped that the identification of the prevalence and types of IHD and its related factors as well as of its critical effects on the interns, residents and patients health will allow developing intervention strategies and management of this phenomenon in the course of training specialists in Nigeria.