Month: November 2021

How Sexual Harassment is Rampant in Healthcare

The healthcare system is facing a second crisis. The Covid pandemic has demonstrated its infrastructure and personnel levels leave much to be desired. However, another problem lurks behind the scenes, one that not many people in the sector are willing to address. Sexual harassment is a growing problem of endemic proportions, leaving a stream of victims in its wake.

The healthcare industry seems to have created a haven for acts of sexual harassment, with perpetrators facing few, if any, consequences. Here is what you need to know about it.

Easy pickings

Many people are at their most vulnerable when they visit a healthcare professional or institution. Predators take advantage of this and perpetrate illegal acts against them, according to sexual harassment attorneys listed in the USAttorneys database. The healthcare system has become a safe place for these offenders to hide as they have easy access to victims and face no real repercussions.

Medical professionals are so well-respected and held in high esteem by society that people do not want to believe that they could be guilty of sexual harassment. After all, they study for many years and carry responsibility for their patients’ lives. How could someone so noble stoop to sexual harassment? The unfortunate reality is that it happens more often than most people think.

A system enabling sexual harassment

The healthcare system has three factors that make it fertile ground for sexual harassment: a strict hierarchal structure, male-dominated staffing, and a climate that tolerates inappropriate behavior. The hierarchy means that sexual harassment claims go through multiple layers of bureaucracy before being dealt with, and many cases get lost along the way.

An overwhelming majority of sexual harassment cases are perpetrated by males, part of a legacy of patriarchal societal structures. For years, medicine was a career field that few women pursued, being told that it was a ‘man’s job’ better left to men, the more capable sex.

While more and more women are becoming doctors, the men doing so continue to outnumber them. Weak sexual harassment policies and institutional structures covering predators make healthcare employees and patients vulnerable to sexual harassment.

Hidden figures

Experts predict that the number of unreported sexual harassment cases in the healthcare system greatly outnumbers those that victims dare to come forward with. Sexual harassment victims are afraid to come forward, knowing that bringing a case to a conclusion could be more traumatic than what happened. They must tell their story multiple times, often to a skeptical audience reluctant to act against esteemed healthcare professionals.

This lack of reporting and the number of cases dismissed without proper investigation make it impossible to provide a qualitative and quantitative assessment of healthcare sexual harassment incidents.

The other side

While many healthcare professionals are sexual harassment perpetrators, some are victims. Female healthcare professionals are often preyed on by superiors, colleagues, and patients.

Many do not report these events, fearing it will ruin their professional reputation. People rely on their reputations to garner respect in the medical community, and reporting sexual harassment could make them appear weak.

Improved policies

Given heightened awareness about sexual harassment in the healthcare systems, institutions and organizations are using more robust policies to combat it. The MeToo movement highlighted a need for platforms where victims can report sexual harassment.

Better procedures mean those investigations are taken seriously and subjected to more scrutiny. The rate of successful outcomes where sexual harassers experience punitive measures increases and people feel freer to come forward and report incidents. This has put healthcare workers on notice that their bad behavior will not be tolerated, and they cannot hide behind their qualifications and reputations.

Teaching Your Kids to Adjust in a Multicultural Classroom Environment

The world is constantly changing and where once classroom environments were monocultural, they are now multicultural and teachers have to get used to the diversity. Even today, in the 21st-century, skin color reveals a person’s chances and challenges. Kids should be taught how to adjust to new, multicultural classroom environments where skin tone shouldn’t be linked to positive or negative associations.

Traumatic events counseling

A traumatic event in the classroom environment poses a threat to a child’s mental and physical wellbeing. Bullying, being ridiculed, and experiencing violence can be frightening for a migrant child and their life at school is one of stress and trauma. The child experiences anxiety, fear, withdrawal, depression, and anger.

Kelowna Counseling plays an important role in counseling children. Children are vulnerable to discrimination. Part of their developmental growth depends on social interactions. With conflict and animosity in the classroom, they can’t hope to do well. Interactive Counselling has respectful and supportive counselors who offer several types of counseling sessions. It can be in person, by phone, or online and always at times that suit you.

Become familiar with some unusual traditions

Look at London today. It has always been an essentially White, English-speaking city but it has become one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Teachers have their hands full with a multicultural classroom that proves challenging when trying to keep the peace, respect, and tolerance.

To embrace this multiculturalism, teachers are encouraging the kids to become familiar with the different cultural festivals. For the festive season, people in many parts of the world celebrate Christmas in different ways with some unusual traditions.

Have a food fair with strange dishes

To encourage tolerance in the classroom, teachers can hold a food fair for just one day in the classroom to celebrate different dishes from around the world. Each child can bring a favorite dish that is commonly eaten in the country they are from.

One of the Spanish kids is bound to bring Paella Valenciana, a famous dish with rabbit and chicken or even seafood. It’s always a mouth-watering dish and eaten at lunchtime. The child can also tell the class about the origin of the dish before sharing it.

Make charts of the differences

Encourage the kids to recognize the difference with the kids in the class. Kids in the younger classes can create artwork that depicts the different eye colors, hair colors, skin color, and body types of kids. The average height of the Maasai people in Africa is roughly 6 feet, 3 inches, while the average height of Chinese people is roughly 5 foot 6 inches.

Point out the similarities and differences and explain to the kids how these differences make the world such an interesting place to live in. Teachers can even get the kids to create colorful placards with diversity and tolerance quotes such as ‘we may have differences, but we all belong to one human race.

Challenge kids to learn just some of the language

Teachers can make a point of getting the kids to learn something about the different backgrounds of pupils in the class. True, the school curriculum might dictate that the kids learn two languages in class, but it can be fun having a competition to see who can learn some of the more common sayings from each language group represented in the class.

Learning just a bit of another child’s language can demonstrate acceptance and tolerance in the classroom. It would also be a good idea to include some books from different cultures and languages. These are all great ideas to introduce multiculturalism into the classroom.

Team Sports to Encourage Diversity and Inclusivity in Educational Institutes

There is no I in a team and there is no one-size-fits-all kind of team either. The greatest developing asset of team sports is that it promotes inclusivity and diversity.

Throughout history, team sports have shown society that success relies not on uniformity and monotony but on the strengths of different people who work together towards a common goal. Educational institutions need to embrace this asset of team sports to encourage diversity and inclusivity.

Be an example

There are several movements nowadays that want to shed light on inequalities and exclusion. As a coach or educational institute, it is imperative to be an example and show the students and athletes the benefits of diversity. Cultures differ and we are richer for it if we choose to learn from each other.

Coaches are in the perfect position to display an accepting character and lead the way for the team to also learn from each other and build on each other’s strengths. If there are a diverse group of athletes in your squad, let them take turns to sit at the basketball scorers table and observe how other cultures do things. Sideline Interactive has amazing scoring boards that will entertain your team members as well as afford several players to sit at the table at once.

Develop a team culture

When there is a diverse group of players in your team, the best way to encourage the team to include everyone is to develop a team culture. This is an organic culture made up of all the different members and cultures of the team. This culture will differ for every team, but inclusivity should be at the heart of it.

No celebration should be done in isolation or while excluding someone. What many coaches find is that although inclusivity might not be at the heart of the team culture initially, it is an inevitable end when a team wins and loses together. They start to see the value of each member and begin to learn from each other.

Promote encouragement

Not everyone on a team has the same level of skill or abilities, but everyone in the team can bring something to the table. In team sports, coaches have the opportunity to use this difference in the ability to promote encouragement and upliftment. A coach should be very strict when it comes to negativity in a team.

No one should be allowed to talk down someone who made a mistake. Instead, teammates should have each other’s backs and encourage each other to improve. This can only be done when winning is not the main goal but rather the development of a team.

Be deliberate in selection

Coaches want to have the best players on their teams, but this means that all bias should be thrown out the window. Regardless of background, creed, or culture, a coach needs to look at talent and will find that it hides in the most unlikely of places. A mixed team is often the result and then it is the coach’s job to pair teammates who differ so that they can learn from each other.

Address the elephant in the room

A close-knit team is like a family and every member of a family has their baggage, history, personality and beliefs. Conflict is bound to come up and the last thing that a team wants is for the division to occur. Therefore, whenever there is a heated topic or controversial issue in a team, it should be spoken about openly. Hiding away from it or pretending it is a non-issue will only divide a team.

The Inside Out of Life After Divorce with a Baby

Contrary to popular belief, divorce is not easier on children when their parents split while they are infants. It affects children of all ages in different ways, and babies are no exception. Indeed, babies and toddlers struggle as much with a divorce as they cannot express their emotions in words.

After a divorce, life with a baby is challenging, and parental cooperation is necessary to make it successful. Here are some of the realities parents and children will face:

Frustration

Emotions run high during a divorce. People’s feelings are hurt and calm rational conversations might feel impossible. The best child custody lawyers from USAttorney state that emotions can cloud divorce agreement discussions, especially related to custody. Both parents feel frustrated by the situation. In a typical divorce, one spouse is eager to get it over with and start a new life, while the other is still in shock and feeling devastated about the situation.

Many parents feel frustrated about being left to care for a baby alone. Working and being a single parent is a challenging prospect, and they worry about coping without their spouse’s support.

Mistrust

The idea of leaving their baby in the other spouse’s custody fills many parents with fear. They worry that their ex-spouse will not care for their child properly. These trust issues might come from betrayal in the marriage that had nothing to do with their children. For instance, one spouse might translate the other’s infidelity into them not being trustworthy in any way, including as a parent.

Overcoming these feelings of mistrust is challenging, and parents must separate their feelings about the breakdown of their relationship from their child’s best interests. They need to understand that they cannot remain in control all the time and must rely on their ex-spouse to do what is necessary while the baby is in their care.

Communication

Divorce can never be a clean break when a child is involved. Parents are linked forever by their offspring. This means having to communicate with each other after a divorce. For some ex-spouses, the thought of managing this is unbearable as they are still hurt and upset about what has transpired.

When feelings run high, it is easy to bring up past hurts in conversations between former spouses. Each should concentrate on limiting what they discuss to matters regarding the child, always remembering that it is in their baby’s best interests to keep the communication channels open.

Fear

When an ex-spouse moves on and starts a new relationship, the other former partner will instantly panic about being replaced by a stepparent. This is a terrifying prospect as parents fear that their child will like the stepparent more than them and reject them. It leads to feelings of anger and resentment, leading parents to badmouth the other parent and their partner.

Overcoming this fear is challenging, but it is typically unfounded. Children might form an attachment to a stepparent, but that person can never replace their biological parent. Provided parents remain active in their baby’s life, they are unlikely to experience this.

Additional stress

Babies are perceptive and understand that things around them are changing. Most do not respond to this prospect positively as they thrive on routine and things staying as they are. Any disruptions cause them emotional distress that they could express through clinginess, extreme emotional reactions, and developmental regression.

It takes babies a while to settle into a new routine and environment, and parents need to be patient with themselves, their child, and their ex-spouse. The child might have difficulty eating and sleeping for an initial period until they feel safe again.