Doctors are frequently the utmost of professionals. However, they make mistakes, too, and people who work with them are not necessarily spared from unwanted sexual harassment.

One woman in Georgia says she endured harassment and retaliation in her experience working with a physician at Georgia Health Sciences University. She says after she was harassed and complained about it, she was fired.

In her federal lawsuit filed earlier this month, the woman, who worked as a social worker in the hematology and oncology department at the medical facility, says she was hired in February 2010. Less than a week after that, she says, the doctor told her he had noticed she was "sitting with her legs open," according to the Augusta Chronicle.

The physician also allegedly stated that the department was hiring women with big breasts and females who showed their knees - apparently a reference to how she dressed.

She says she met with her supervisor and the head of the department to discuss the physician's behavior. However, the department chairman apparently implored her to let him handle the matter as a personal favor. The doctor had apparently been involved in similar complaints in the past and was likely to lose his job.

It was ultimately recommended that the doctor get sensitivity training. However, he continued to make harassing remarks, the woman says. She was fired in the summer of 2010, apparently because her work was unsatisfactory.

She says it was retaliation for complaining about the harassment.

Source: August Chronicle, "Federal suit claims sexual harassment," Kyle Martin, Sept. 26, 2011