Shocking lack of concern about rapes and sexual assaults in Scotland's hospitals must end
Despite the alarming number of rapes and sexual assaults known to have taken place in hospitals, some health boards still do not record the information
The history of medicine in Scotland is as storied as our once glorious past in the fields of education and philosophy.
The Scottish Enlightenment moved the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire to famously declare that “we look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation”, while our schools once produced many a “lad o’ pairts” – a child from a poor background who went on to achieve great things.
It’s not a phrase used much today, and the stubborn persistence of the educational ‘attainment gap’ between pupils from wealthy and poor families suggests that dream is slowly dying.
READ MORE: Shocking number of sexual assaults and rapes in Scotland's hospitals is an urgent crisis for SNP
Progress is possible
Edinburgh Infirmary, which became “royal” later, opened in 1729 and, together with Edinburgh University’s medical school, it helped turn Scotland’s capital into a leading centre for medical research in Europe – “a reputation that it enjoyed for most of the 18th and much of the 19th century”, according to NHS Lothian.
The past contains as many horror stories as inspiring tales but it does show that making progress is possible, setting the current woes of Scotland’s public services – the state of the NHS, violence and poor results in schools, universities and colleges in financial crisis – in an instructive context.
Waiting lists for medical procedures and waiting times for so-called ‘emergency’ treatment are now so long that people are dying before they can be seen, an ongoing scandal to which we must never become inured.
Understanding the scale of the problem
But the revelation earlier this year that women are being raped and sexually assaulted while in hospital was a truly shocking example of just how bad things have become.
Using freedom of information legislation, the Women’s Rights Network Scotland discovered there had been 276 sexual assaults and 12 rapes over five years in the 57 hospitals in Scotland – out of 198 – that record this information. So it’s obvious the true number is significantly greater.
The reason why it is important to know about the extent of the problem is so that the appropriate action can be taken. And yet, since the WRNS raised the issue in March, only three health boards have changed their incident recording systems.
In, of all places, a hospital, women’s safety should be guaranteed. That it is not feels like a grim story from a history book about the worst hospitals of the pre-Florence Nightingale era – a past to which we must not regress.
Who would look to Scotland for “ideas of civilisation” now?