Hospital refuses to operate after woman requests all-female care

Amazing that your issue isn’t that her procedure is cancelled and she is now so ill that she can’t have any treatment, but that she spoke the the Daily Mail about it.

It’s always “we would listen and care that you’re being terribly mistreated but you’re too loud, we don’t like your tone, you told the wrong person, blah blah blah.

Namely - www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/16/20/7

It’s very different.

Have you not read the Equality Act 2010?

This is no different to patients specifying that they don’t want medical staff of a particular ethnicity or religion treating them.

Which is - incidentally - a regrettably common request in healthcare settings.

The fact this was at a private hospital really underlines that this was about what she said, not what was practical. Private hospitals exist to make money. Cancelling the procedure at that late stage will have costs them thousands of pounds.

If the issue was about ITU provision or staffing they would have phoned her and explained what they could and could not offer e.g private room and en suite after ITU but most ITUs are mixed sex by virtue of being ITUs. They also could have said they would aim for female nursing staff but in the event of emergency care, unforeseen staff absence etc they may not be able to guarantee it.
That would have been the sensible rational thing to do.

The response was so disproportionate it really is telling.

Wow.

I believe the other case to which you refer has a different ending & was much more serious than you have described. Your version appears to be both wrong & out of date. I'm not getting at you; I simply don't want anyone reading this to get the wrong idea.

That is so effed up. After reading the letters back and forth to the hospital, the patient is clearly in the right. The hospital did a whole manner of unprofessional & heartless actions.

Ultimately it is not the point of what the hospital could or could not offer, what they did not do was treat the patient with respect. They could have responded to her requests for female staff with explanations why it would be impossible, or they could have tried to meet her in the middle, etc etc.

Instead they cancelled her extremely important operation putting her at risk of ill health, cancelled the surgeons, wasted all the resources of the operating theatre, only 3 days before it was due. Because they don't share her 'BELIEFS'.

Utter madness. To protect a man's ego. To uphold a narcissistic delusion.

I hope she sues, she will surely win.

The female chaperone suggestion sounds a sensible compromise. I'm guessing providing only female staff post surgery is a challenge.

When I had recent surgery at Princess Grace, each floor seemed to have their own specialist nursing and medical staff so I'm not sure they could just reshuffle them between wards that easily.

The split of female to male medical staff was about 60:40 so perhaps they were concerned about resourcing the ward with only female nurses for an extended stay? Who presumably then would have to cover the other patients on that floor or you'd be back to having male nurses around on the ward.

Having read the various emails, i think the lady has a fair point about having a conversation to find an acceptable solution rather than cancelling the surgery. That seems harsh. But, equally, the hospital also has a duty to ensure it's safely resourced for all patients staying at that time.

@Clymene - it seems people still don't understand what screening is.

When I was foolish enough to be on Twitter I seemed to have endless fights with people who conflated even emergency procedures with screening. Where I live, only 51% of eligible women attend for screening mammograms. This will drop even further if males are allowed to do it.

I digress and apologies for the derail. This case is awful and needs to get to court.

It a private hospital who has decided to cancel their contract with a patient not the NHS refusing surgery. I have to say I was on her side about female in intimate care as it is normal for males to have a chaperone for intimate procedures on females, but as soon as she said a male doctor was okay I lost all respect for her point of view.

A male nurse providing care is no different to a male doctor it isn't the 1900s 🤬. If I was the CEO I would also be worried from a liability point of view, what if she need intervention from say the acute response team at 3am who on the closest team happen to male nurse APs. They don't have MBBS after their name so would they be okay, what if the male physicians associate or pharmacist has to provide care again no MBBS.

What if the ward has an outbreak of an infectious disease and she has to be moved out of the private room as it is needed for isolation and into a mixed bay in ICU.

That's without even really thinking about it, given time no doubt I could come up with a multitude of other possible problems.

I also wonder if the "male" she is on about in a wig happens to be a biological female who has now been insulted by the patient.

The hospital's behaviour is appalling but ironically this woman may have been better served in the NHS. I assume that a private hospital is able to pick and choose patients in a way that the NHS cannot.

Whilst I absolutely support her desire for same sex accommodation and intimate care, in this instance I can see it could be tricky (leave aside the lipsticked male who stuck his head round the door during her appointment). Intensive care units tend not to have much (if any) single room provision - obviously I've no idea of the lay out of ICU at the Princess Grace. The ICU at my hospital has four single rooms which are generally used for isolation/infection control and would be unlikely to be available to accommodate personal preference however compelling the request.
I'd have thought accommodation on the main wards would be all single room en suite at a smart London private hospital.

As regards staffing, although nursing remains predominantly female, there tend to be more male nurses on ICU so although one would expect it to be possible to arrange staffing to accommodate a request for female only, it might not be possible over a prolonged stay.

None of which excuses the decision of the hospital or the way they handled the matter.

As I clarified in my previous post, I'm talking about routine screening for women who don't have any concerns but who are invited for screening because of their age

im fairly positive that our breast screening place says you will only be seen by a female…I’m sure it was in the leaflet

I would never, ever consent to a mammogram with a male radiographer

Nor me.

My breast clinic is all-female.
Perhaps I’m lucky as it’s big city teaching hospital with a special unit solely for BC care. I’ve been going yearly since I was 35 as part of a research project.

it’s every proudly all-female in the day clinic (I’ve not experienced the ward) but even the professor running the study I’m in is female.

They see male breast cancer patients outside of normal clinic hours.

Don’t let the above poster put you off - make enquiries as to what’s available locally when the screening letter arrives. I expect it’s more likely they can offer you a guaranteed female radiographer than not.

I would never, ever consent to a mammogram with a male radiographer (and personally had no issue whatsoever with male OB consultants for pregnancy, so am not personally someone who insists on female only in all situations).

ScaryFaces

There are very few women in the world who are not sexual assault survivor, but the term "sexual assault" covers a huge range of violence and even the same type of sexual assault produces different traumas in different people.

I think your reaction is utterly, utterly heartless

In this case, it seems the patient was ok with male doctors, but requested that she be nursed by female nurses only.
I think this is reasonable. When I had my first child, I requested female midwives due to preference and faith. Shortly after giving birth, I was asked by my midwife to bare my perineum to a very flustered teenaged man who was doing a pre-nursing course. When he shyly averted his eyes, she insisted on pointing out the details of the bruising I had accumulated the day before. I can only think that she was either trying to embarass him, or me.
The main issue in this case though, is that the patient was confronted not just by a male member of staff, but by one with gender dysphoria who was asserting himself in the role of a woman.
The 'uncanny valley' experience of coming across men presenting as women is disconcerting in any situation to some degree, but in this case was particularly disturbing, I'm sure.
There does seem to be a trend for gender dysphoric men to insist on deliberately placing themselves in roles that disadvantage or discomfort women (eg 'Heather' Peto) It can only be intentional.

Exactly.

A reasonable compromise would be ‘we got guarantee that all your care will be by an exclusively female team but we can provide a female nurse/chaperone so you will never be alone with a male’

It’s a private hospital so they could presumably supply a 24/7 rota of female chaperones (eg HCA) for the entire inpatient stay, hired in via an agency, with the additional costs agreed in advance and passed on to the patient (plus admin fee, no doubt!)

As I clarified in my previous post, I'm talking about routine screening for women who don't have any concerns but who are invited for screening because of their age.

I wish I hadn't mentioned it now.

This is so fucking obscene I'm too angry to say anything but that if there is a crowdfunder to sue them I will be champing at the bit to contribute.

LOL

@Clymene are they hell all staffed my females.
I had a male do my screening and then a male surgeon do my breast surgery. If they've got the quals and a half decent bedside manner I couldn't give a monkeys whether they have breasts or a penis.
I've also got a good friend who works on rotation in the breast clinic and works with a fair few men

Great, that's me not going for bloody breast screening. Thanks for letting me know.

I absolutely knew this would be the Princess Grace without even opening the article. It's well known with woke folk.

100%

If they'd said 'we've considered your request and given staffing etc etc, it just won't be possible for us to offer that but here is (x,y,z) that we can offer', it wouldn't have been ideal, but understandable.

That wasn't the reason given. Despite some posters insisting that we have somehow misread the actual correspondence which have been screenshot onto a Twitter thread from the hospital.

It's ideological. Couple that with the ongoing complaint and it's even more unsettling.