Male midwife facing 29 charges of misconduct,

MoltenLasagne I think abusers groom everyone, not just person they are assaulting.

This wasn't assault, but I recently went to a new GP and he was 'off' in a couple of things he did to me.

When I went out to the receptionists, I asked for a different, female doctor for the next appointment. They gave each other a definite Look and changed my doctor immediately. His wife is the other receptionist and she wasn't on that day, had she been, it would have been harder to ask.

I imagine he is the head of the practice, these women depend on him for their employment, everyone knows he's a bit of a sleaze but he's also probably competent and runs a tight ship and everyone just works around it for an easy life.

Allegations are landmines, and I think with such HCPs they rely on people being too busy, scared, distracted, blissfully unaware to blow the whistle.

To be fair, there are several other studies showing that being operated in by a male surgeon isn’t as good a being operated in by a female surgeon…
Apparently women are better anyway 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

When I read these articles I'm always astonished at how long people get away with bad behaviour. It's not just a vetting and training issue, it's also a complete lack of reporting and reviewing mechanism in the NHS.

I used to work in a bank branch and if a customer complained we were regulatorily required to record it within 48 hours. It didn't matter if we thought the complaint was absurd - it had to be recorded, the wording confirmed with the customer and only then could it be reviewed and either dismissed or actioned.

Not recording the complaint, even if you genuinely forgot because you were busy, was a breach - 2 in a year was an immediate under performer rating for you personally and also impacted your manager.

As a consequence the whole team knew that we had a responsibility to act on complaints, not try to talk a customer out of complaining, and the manager was also seriously invested in listening to customers.

Imagine how much more confident you would feel as a patient if you knew that all staff were obliged to take any and all complaints seriously and to record them to your satisfaction. Imagine how much faster you could identify "rotten apples" if evidence, even the small stuff, was recorded and linked together rather than shut down in a culture of silence.

*xraying their genitals

I have it in my notes to only be seen by female medics. In an emergency situation of course I accept male medics, but if there's time for a choice, I have female. Every time.

When I have ended up with male in an emergency, they've always been very careful with me and I've always thanked them for that. Male medics were not careful with me earlier in my life, including sexual assault when I was quite ill and alone. I don't care the reason they're careful with me after seeing my notes - their nature/chance/fear I'm someone who makes false accusations (I'm not) - the fact I've not had a panic attack or been left needing therapy is valuable to me.

Just going to add that I would refuse a mammogram with a male nurse. I don't know if men do that, but I can imagine some would want to. I don't think men should ever be in that role. Don't care if it's sexist. If men said they didn't want females staying their genitals, only other men should do that, I would not object.

S'OK @Blue4YOU

Sometimes losing the 'tone' of a post is easily done.

As we have both just shown

That was for @SamphiretheStickerist

No I know. I’m agreeing with you too. Sorry should have said

Then we get to priests and we all know how that went, requires about 5 years of training after a bachelors.

The medical field is no better or worse populated by abusers than any other field.
They live among us and generally cant be detected.

I wasn't disagreeing with you @Blue4YOU

I was agreeing with you, adding to the idea of how bloody ridiculous it is, living within the current socal state of patriarchy!

@SamphiretheStickerist
Of course it’s weird to have to even consider officially recording something in a doctor’s office/surgery etc
But given how vocal “he said/she said” means no “evidence “ (by which is usually meant incontrovertible objective evidence) can be adduced means we “MUST” assume the perpetrator is “innocent until proven guilty” stance (which is actually meant to be the position a jury or judge takes in relation to a case rather than say the police or the GMC.. just leads to the corollary claim being accepted as common sense: that is, assuming no “concrete”/objective or independent evidence means a claim must either be false or is unprovable.
Holocaust deniers used the same logic.
I don’t want to be on cctv in a doctor’s surgery.
But.. they have CCTV in all the corridors- to prevent assault in HCPs (which sadly does occur).
And we don’t get to consent to that either.
I’m not suggesting CCTV is appropriate or the only solution but until phrases like “crying rape” stop being a rallying cry to not listen to women in complaints that could help identify abusers earlier rather than later, I’m going to say the onus is on employers and regulators to work on this

Yet other researchers did! Male and female.

The stats were eyewatering, not small margins in some cases. And many confounding factors were taken into consideration. It's impossible to include them all, you wouldn't be abe to make any comparisons at all!

I'd be very, very loath to dismiss the research because a male researching surgeon's professional opinion was bruised by them. He is welcome to add his voice to the debate, but not to dismiss, or be interpreted as dismissing, the research without very specific methodological reasons. And a wide spread of situations isn't necessarily an issue.

It's a new model of understanding. Currently based on 1.3 million patients who underwent one of 21 common elective surgeries in Ontario, Canada between 2007 and 2019. Not a small or quick study, by any means.

And the study itself makes no judgements, says the underlying reasons for the figures are not known, more study required. So again, one male researching surgeon should throw his weight behind further study rather than simply dismiss what could be something that could possibly be detrimental to 50+% of the world population.

As a researcher he should know better. Better than to make any simple statements, especially directly to the media!

There's a reason they're usually not caught after the first, second or third instance of abuse. They cultivate trust and loyalty bonds in the people they need. You'll only see it if you're someone who they don't care about - because they know nobody will believe you.

It was a slippery slope that caused crimes to happen and social problems to be left to fester rather than be dealt with at root.

[quote CaveMum]@KevinTheKoala there was a report recently that stated women were more likely to die during surgery performed by a man so there may be something in saying let’s have female Drs (actual females, not folk playing dress up) for women and male Drs for men. I certainly wouldn’t have an issue with it.

amp.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/04/women-more-likely-die-operation-male-surgeon-study[/quote]
These figures were discussed with the surgeon researcher on BBCs More or Less recently (last week) and showed that there was too much difference within sub categories of surgeries (ie heart surgery includes different types of surgeries and different outcomes based on the underlying health conditions if the patient, plus there are different risks with different surgeries across specialities) for the conclusion to be how it was reported in the media. The researching surgeon did not agree with the media headlines/articles about it.

As has happened oh so often already, in many different circumstances.

Could we not just listen to what women want?

I don't think men should be midwives. They're there to support women through a uniquely female experience and I just don't think that's appropriate for a male. Drs etc are different although we do need to be able to ask for females when we want one.

And yes constantly surprised at the number of women who can't conceive that other women think differently to them/ have had different experiences and seem obsessed with protecting mens feelings.

The article is very shocking and I wonder how many complaints or issues were dismissed with eye rolls before any action was taken.

Mind you, even then things can get complicated. On the one hand we have patients being dismissed as whiners and troublemakers when they have a genuine complaint (whether that is of assault by HCPs or being misdiagnosed as timewasters when there is something seriously, dangerously wrong with them)... but then we have people refusing proven treatment in favour of demanding some grifter nonsense they read about online (all those antivaxxers with Covid screaming for Ivermecting)

I'm never entirely sure that 'more cctv' is a good answer to any social problem, though.
CUltural changes in healthcare, such as encouraging patients to feel they can speak up and make requests and be listened to are definitely a good idea.

@RedToothBrush
Hear hear!!

Its a constant undermining of women and essentially a power abuse to make women feel uncomfortable in making a request.

You then get a ripple in effect for how women are treated. Its definitely done more to women because of sexism and the idea that women should not assert themselves and in many cases enforce their existing rights.

This is why cultural changes through out the nhs are needed to stop patients feeling they are being a nuisance.

@MaryAndHerNet
Couldn’t agree more!
Except there are also the hordes of male commenters n social media talking about how women should not be allowed to have anonymous reporting of sexual offences, saying “another good man” accused and so on.

Several posters have said that men should not be allowed to be midwives, along with yelling that any man who is interested in midwifery must be a potential rapist because otherwise why would he want to touch or look at fannies etc.

Several posters have indeed shared their opinion and others have shared their different perspectives.

I realise the difficulties in interpreting 'yelling' through the medium of text but that feels rather hyperbolic as does the unnuanced summary of the claim about "potential rapist" and the ascribing of motives.

Nonetheless, given the information in the OP I think we would all agree that the charges are grave and cover a wide range of consent issues (amongst other items) that merit discussion. This is a good companion piece to the AIBU thread about students and consent.

@GrealishHairband
Thank you.
And definitely women assume safety with gay men. I did.
Two and a half years later I’m still undergoing trauma therapy and having nightmares etc

It wouldn't be so bad if it was just men getting annoyed and calling women names, but it's other women. It's astounding to me.
It seems some women hear of abuse victims, tape victims etc and instead of thing, There but for the grace of God go I, they hurl themselves at the feet of men to defend men from having to make any alterations to their lives.