Hospital refuses to operate after woman requests all-female care

A handyman did come in- but a midwife asked me first. This was the NHS, too

noooooooooo

surely not, how incredibly unreasonable of her…quite obviously every fucker should be allowed in your room with no introduction whatsoever

"Absolutely …..so our imaginary male cleaner , handyman , pharmacist, physio, and didnt we have an electrician 🤔 would have probably been ok in the patients room if she’d been told about it BEFORE they came in"

I wondered what had happened to Village People!

Funny you should say that, Rufus. I was once in a separate room on post-natal due to complications. A handyman did come in- but a midwife asked me first. This was the NHS, too.

She acted as if it was completely routine to ask.

AND

as long as none of those imaginary males (fucking busy room i gotta say) were giving her intimate care

Absolutely …..so our imaginary male cleaner , handyman , pharmacist, physio, and didnt we have an electrician 🤔 would have probably been ok in the patients room if she’d been told about it BEFORE they came in

It's really weird that people are getting hung up on what constitutes a reasonable request, when it's the unreasonableness and discriminatory motive for cancelling that's the problem.

It's all about what the hospital has done, and fuck all about the what the woman has done.

You can criticise her till the cows come home. It's fuck all to do with it. She wasn't discriminatory. She didn't cancel a life changing operation.

They did.

It is their behaviour that is wrong and illegal. Not hers.

Whether you agree with her or not, unpicking her motives, requests, or tone is a total waste of time.

if a woman was fired from a job because she is black, and her boss wrote that down in an email to her. Would you start unpicking her behaviour. She didn't contribute to the birthday fund? Her timekeeping was poor?

Jeez.

Basically she just wanted to be asked for her prior consent to which males saw her when she was in a very vulnerable state. This would have only needed a female caregiver to ask her first before they came in for the first time.

What a heinous request.

Not meaning to derail but this is why so many women want all female care when they receive intimate procedures. Sadly he's one of many:

www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/14643000.highly-manipulative-groping-gynaecologist-jailed-eight-years/

She said in writing she didn’t want males in the room

she said ….i will accept male staff entering my room ONLY if they are qualified doctors unless by prior agreement with me

so its exactly what she said

and as other posters pointed out, it really doesn’t matter what she said …they cancelled her operation because she ‘didn’t share their values’ and they very very very stupidly put that in writing

I mean, you can continue to 'lalalala' with your fingers in your ears if you like, but it starts to look ridiculously, deliberately disingenuous.

This tends to happen when you identify as your personal internal reality being the real one against the objective, evidenced one.

With regard to her views - they don’t state the values that she holds thay they find objectionable.

Perhaps they don't agree with her views about poached eggs on pizza? Fancy dress outfits for cats? How many times a bourbon biscuit should be dunked in coffee?

Or it is perfectly obvious, reading the email, that they object to her request for single sex intimate care and particularly object to her having to point out the utterly obvious point that female means an actual female. Particularly given that the second paragraph specifically says 'I appreciate this is not the communication you were expecting to receive, however HCA is committed to protecting our staff from unacceptable distress and we believe the cornerstone of good patient care is based on mutual respect and trust'.

They don't actually state staffing levels, difficulties with arrangements or limitations in terms of shift patterns at all.

Is their initially email vague and weird - yes.

Not even the slightest bit vague. Weird, discriminatory and threatening - yes.

And here's the point that many posters are sticking their fingers in their ears and singing 'lalalalala!' to avoid....

The initial email did not say 'we are sorry but upon considering your request, it won't be possible due to staffing etc etc.' It was stated quite baldly 'we do not share your beliefs'.

I mean, you can continue to 'lalalala' with your fingers in your ears if you like, but it starts to look ridiculously, deliberately disingenuous.

She said in writing she didn’t want males in the room

And they said, in writing, they have cancelled because they dont share the same values. It is in black and white, it's so clear you can see it from Mars.
All this shite about wanting but not getting female only care (in 2022 ffs) is pointless drivel. Because they cancelled BECAUSE they have different values.
It's as illegal as it gets.

This is a great post, which bears repeating.

Do you work for the hospital, are you a TRA or are you just stupid? Because for some reason you can't seem to understand that the operation was cancelled because the hospital didn't "share [the patient's] values." They wrote it out in an email to her. It could not be more plain and simple to understand.

@rufus except that’s not what she said.

She said in writing she didn’t want males in the room. Had she requested no males doing personal care that would be a totally normal thing to request (including no trans identifying males). Read her email - she’s not saying I don’t want a male washing my vulva she’s saying no men anywhere near me other than doctors.

im all for women saying no men helping me get washed or dressed or Doing catheter care and am actively working to make this a reality where I work. This is standard stuff. Patients who request this are informed that we will do our absolute best to honour this request, that due to staffing it isn’t always possible and that in an emergency they will get whatever professional comes first, if they are conscious they will be asked if they want this male involved but if they have arrested for example they get the crash team as it comes and they won’t stop to find a female staff member before sticking the defib pads on. We have female only bays but they have male cleaners/handymen/pharmacists/physios etx. A request for female only personal care does not include all of these people being female, let alone the male relatives of the other female patients.

She also said she didn’t want to use “pronouns” - not clear if she means she didn’t want staff to refer to her by (her) pronouns or if she didn’t want to refer to staff by their preferred pronouns - this isn’t a standard request.

I'm just going to scroll past the posters who haven't bothered to find out what's going on here and are insisting on making it about their personal hobby horses.

And again…

If a patient says verbally "I'm assuming my bathroom will have a bidet", or "I want my husband to be able to visit any time he likes” you explain why that isn’t possible and ask if they want to go ahead knowing that (we have kosher food). Bathrooms people get over usually, husbands not being able to stay had led to several people walking out on the day of the procedure as they are not happy to proceed on those grounds. It’s easier face to face to say he can’t do x do you still want to go ahead…..it dosent matter if it’s life saving or not, if the patient wants something not possible and can’t be persuaded to go ahead without it then there is no surgery. We defiantly don’t promise stuff we can’t do and then not deliver - that’s invalid consent.

She didn’t discuss this in advance or at pre op though , she stated what she expected to happen in writing post pre op and worded it in such a way that it sounds as if she had assumed all of this was the case and had booked with them on those grounds. As she had written they replied in writing to say they couldn’t meet her requirements. Should they then have offered a meeting to discuss - yes I think they should have. Is their initially email vague and weird - yes.

do I think this hospital is infiltrated with TRA - possibly. Do I think they discriminated against her due to her gender critical views - possibly. Do i think she is asking for the impossible and there is no way that she will ever be happy with the care provided and so it’s just not worth the risk for the hospital - absolutely. She is going to end up suing because either they didn’t keep the area male free or because her care suffered due to it being male free and so they panicked and cancelled. There now being sued for discrimination kind of proving their point (payout probably less than a massive medical negligence one)

I honestly don’t know how this can be any clearer

its been said eleventy billion times that she didn’t want males doing intimate care and due to her history wanted a heads up if any males were going into her room

she also clearly puts doctors on some sort of pedestal which is contrary to my professional values as mandated by my regulator . I believe that my allied health colleagues are my professional equals and these are the values of the hospital in which I work. Patients cannot refuse to see a nurse consultant or a pharmacist prescriber saying they want to see a doctor instead as this is contrary to the hospitals values on professional equality.

What a load of guff to avoid admitting that you know she means she doesn't want a male washing her vulva.

@SelfPortraitWithFoxInSmokingJacket i think most of my post is why her requirements as she initially stated them are not possible in a safe healthcare system.

No men entering her room rather than female only care is more than what is normally provided in nhs hospitals caring for staff that request female only care (never worked in this particular hospital) which suggests it is out of the usual.

also I am not sure (has it ever been tested in court) that the single sex exemptions with regard to hospitals include hotel like services?

you say it is clear in an emergency that she would allow men in - it is no way clear that she feels this in her letters. And what hospital feels is an emergency and what she feels may be very different.

With regard to her views - they don’t state the values that she holds thay they find objectionable.

My reading of it is that is that she is declining to use the preferred pronouns of people. She can believe as I do that gender is a load of bullshit but she can’t then start referring to hospital staff by the pronouns and names that she wants to. I can hold the protected belief that homosexuality is a sin due to my religion but I can’t then refuse to acknowledge two men are married to each other (as in the case with the marriage registrar).

she also clearly puts doctors on some sort of pedestal which is contrary to my professional values as mandated by my regulator . I believe that my allied health colleagues are my professional equals and these are the values of the hospital in which I work. Patients cannot refuse to see a nurse consultant or a pharmacist prescriber saying they want to see a doctor instead as this is contrary to the hospitals values on professional equality. She cannot say doctors are some special group from which males are allowed but all other groups are lesser. A patient saying this where I work would be told that they can have care from an appropriate practitioner or they can not have care (they can however in non emergencies choose the sex (not gender - this was a fight that was won) of the healthcare professional if one is available.

if a patient asks for something you cannot provide you have to cancel the procedure because otherwise their consent is invalid.

That is an interesting point, but I find it hard to believe it's that simple. So if another patient said, "I want only kosher food," or "I'm assuming my bathroom will have a bidet", or "I want my husband to be able to visit at any time he likes," and you're not entirely sure you can comply, the reasonable option is to cancel the operation unilaterally, without discussion, because they are taken to have withdrawn their consent?

say the the person cleaning the floors is a trans identifying man
Why do words matter? Because I read this as a woman? Others seem to think it's a man. When words no longer have meaning you get this confusion.

So I was going to answer so what, a trans identifying man is a woman therefore no threat?
And still and again for those at the back.
The operation was cancelled because they dont like her thoughts. Fin

This woman wasn't asking for anything outlandish or that the hospital does not regularly provide for its female patients. Her operation was cancelled simply because she doesn't think men are women if they say so.

This. The CEO put it in writing in her email.

And unfortunately for them it's completely illegal to refuse her life saving treatment on those grounds.