Hospital refuses to operate after woman requests all-female care

And yet, if this thread were to be put in Chat or AIBU, lots of women would say she should be grateful for whatever care she was offered and it's her own fault her treatment was cancelled.
I sometimes think women can be their own worst enemies and they don't even realise it.

On my surgical ward NHS we have female & male nurses & HCAs but we always allow patients to have all female care if that's what they prefer.

There is a long thread on Twitter with screenshots of all the correspondence: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1582761032686051329.html

It's actually really frightened me that women can be denied urgent medical care if we ask for all female post op care.

the part that keeps nagging me is… was she actually up in stirrups when the man in a wig* opened the door and made eye contact with her? It reads that way. If she was sitting on a chair fully clothed, that’s still really disturbing and weird, but if it’s the other thing he should be sacked straight away and an apology issued from the hospital, along with a commitment to never treat another woman like they’ve treated her. That is absolute horror show material. At least she wasn’t put in the nightmare scenario of receiving intimate care from someone who’d do that, but presumably many other women are.

*note to MN: there is no evidence of the man’s gender identity or preferred pronouns

All this.

I wonder if this is one of Billy Bragg's examples of free speech having consequences. The consequence being that a hospital can let you die because you have the wrong opinions.

Vote Labour and you'll get a lot more of this, enshrined in law.

It's a truly horrifying thing to happen and I can't see how anyone can defend the hospital's actions. Makes my blood run cold to think about it.

This is horrifying. She had a week of ICU booked - presumably she was expected to be totally dependent on 24/7 1:1 care for most of that time.

I can think of no circumstance more vulnerable than ICU, you can’t get up from the bed and get away from someone, you can’t fight them off, if you are ventilated you can make a noise - yet much of the time you aren’t completely asleep and are aware of people in the room and the intimate care they give. It’s like being a newborn, as it’s standard for patients to be naked, covered only with a sheet & blanket. Toileting is via nappy and catheter, your nurse brushes your teeth.

PTSD type symptoms from ICU isn’t uncommon (often called ‘post intensive care syndrome) and for a patient who already suffers anxiety related to past trauma, being able to trust her care givers is crucial.

I’m so angry on her behalf. It’s not as if there are masses of male nurses to avoid anyway, in such a female dominated profession it should be relatively simple to assign a female nurse and ensure her breaks are covered by another female nurse (bearing in mind that an ICU nurse will only have one patient to look after per shift anyway. When my DD was in intensive care the nurses coming on shift would routinely switch their allocations around to try and give every family as much continuity of care as humanly possible, and that was NHS)

If there’s going to be a garden, I’m in

So much for 'you can always reject any health care professional's services'.

Doesn't seem to work in reality, does it?

It sounds like they messed with the wrong woman. Thank you to Emma the feminist retired lawyer for standing up for herself and other women, and bringing this to the press.

I’m glad this kind of egregious treatment of women is being spotlighted. I hope heads will eventually roll, in particular the CEO and the inappropriate bewigged one, and this hospital will have to improve their care of female patients. Women deserve better.

They would rather women die than hurt a mans feelings. The man who barged in on her intimate procedure should be hauled over the coals not pandered to. Women's rights and basic safeguarding is being ripped up so men can have more rights and privileges.

She would have been in a vulnerable position after the operation, she absolutely should have the right to single sex care.The hospital should have been able to facilitate this.

Sickeningly bullying behaviour by the hospital. I wouldn’t feel safe somewhere with that attitude to patients no matter what sex the nursing staff are.

I just came to see if there was a thread about this. How horrifying. I literally can't think of any other words right now. The world has gone mad.