Prevalence of Workplace Sexual Violence against Healthcare Workers Providing Home Care: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

This systematic review and meta-analysis sought to explore the prevalence of sexual violence including both sexual harassment and abuse, perpetrated by clients against home healthcare workers (HCWs), including professional and paraprofessional HCWs. To this end, we systematically searched five relevant databases. Two reviewers extracted data from the included studies independently and performed a quality appraisal. Overall and subgroup random-effects pooled prevalence meta-analyses were performed. Due to high heterogeneity, a more robust model using a quality effect estimator was used. Fourteen studies were included, and the prevalence of sexual violence was 0.06 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.01–0.13). Paraprofessionals had a higher prevalence of sexual violence (0.07, 95% CI: 0.00–0.18 vs. 0.05, 95% CI: 0.00–0.12), and the prevalence of sexual abuse was lower than that of sexual harassment (0.04, 95% CI: 0.00–0.10 vs. 0.10, 95% CI: 0.03–0.18). This systematic review estimated the p...