Women labelled ‘patients of childbearing potential’ on private London hospital form

Blessed be the fruit

Ridiculous this needs to stop

Yep

Yeah it never works both ways. Always women being told to move over and "be kind". I think we should all refer to men as ejaculators or sperminators from now on.

I just called DH a 'person of ejaculating potential' and he is upset with me. Not fair.

They do ask very obvious questions because of vanishing small reasons they might have “guessed wrong”. For example I have a disabled child and we are often asked if we are related, when we are very obviously not and from different sides of the world.

I do have some sympathy with hospitals on this. They are trying to ensure that no fetuses are exposed to radiation. To do this, they need everyone who might be pregnant to answer the question.

Of course, only women can be pregnant, but the fact is that trans-identifying people of both sexes have come to harm because they answered medical questions as their adopted gender, not their actual sex. We might think that is nuts but it has happened. A hospital that ignores that risk and ends up irradiating an unborn baby is going to be open to criticism and, potentially, litigation. (The risk to a baby from a single x-ray is actually pretty miniscule (fun fact: x-rays used to be used routinely to assess intrauterine growth) but CTs or repeated x-rays, as used in some surgery, are much higher risk.)

So I understand why hospitals are trying to phrase this question in a way that includes all women, including those who identify as men. I think the Cromwell has made a reasonable stab at this, except that they should have said "women and anyone else of childbearing potential".

It's a question the NHS asks as well.

This has nothing to do with the NHS. It's a private hospital that caters mostly to rich foreigners.

LOL !! Ejaculator in charge. This made me laugh

Stop looking for things to be irked by

Stop telling people what they can and can't be irked by.

It would be clearer to say women of childbearing age. It's just another way of erasing the word "women". The thin end of the wedge.

To me that just means women/girls who are menstruating and haven't gone through menopause or don't have any known infertility/hysterectomies etc.

Seems a pretty concise way to say it tbh. Stop looking for things to be irked by 🙄

If a medical professional asked my elderly father if he might be pregnant it would destroy any confidence in their medical knowledge/abilities!

Bit amused at the assumption that patients where English is a second language will know certain words but not others, but it’s always the words that conveniently advance that poster’s argument.

HCP who might be rushing/overworked/thinking about what’s for tea/wearing the wrong glasses and hence misreading the form etc etc

And if an HCP is assessing me I'd like their attention to be on that - not their next tea and bikkie break. A form that can be misread is a badly designed form.

I'd have no objection to womenv referred to as 'patients' in Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Labour Ward etc, as all patients in those contexts are women. But in general medical care, where patients may be female or male, it is offensive to erase women in order to pretend that there is any lack of clarity over which half of the population has the potential to be pregnant.

10 years ago I would have read that and thought it was just a weird way to phrase the question, and my concern would have been about it being un-necessarily convoluted English. Now I see it through a wider lense of the constant attempts to erase women under the excuse of 'inclusivity'.

You’re the one being silly here, I’m afraid

Oh well, that's me told. 🙄

I accompanied my septugenarian father to a health assessment recently. They asked him: are you at risk of pregnancy? Same gender ideology inclusivity at play

Apparently the HCP who might be rushing/overworked/thinking about what’s for tea/wearing the wrong glasses and hence misreading the form etc etc can't tell the difference between men and women, either. That's the problem with gender ideology inclusivity - it leads you further and further down the garden path of ridiculousness.

But as offensive as it is., it still would not help in cases like that dreadful 'trans man' hysterectomy case. As that person was describing themself as a 'man' , (albeit a' man' who had had PIV sex with a male within the last 4 months), they would refuse that description of them self.

I accompanied my septugenarian father to a health assessment recently. They asked him: are you at risk of pregnancy? Same gender ideology inclusivity at play.

In this day and age with IVF and fertility injections…I’d not be so sure. A 72yr old woman had a baby in India.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woman-in-her-70s-may-be-oldest-ever-to-give-birth/

You’re the one being silly here, I’m afraid. It’s best practice to ask everyone rather than leave it to the discretion of a HCP who might be rushing/overworked/thinking about what’s for tea/wearing the wrong glasses and hence misreading the form etc etc. It’s a system designed to minimise human error, premised on the idea that it’s better for a thousand women to have to answer a pointless question than for one woman not to be asked when she should have been, which is perfectly reasonable.

t's no different to calling women 'breeders', 'cervix-owners' or 'uterus-havers'.

These terms refer to women as body parts. They are insulting.

'Patient' refers to the status of the woman as a patient - a perfectly normal word that describes a relationship to a HC service or HCP.

It is different imho. It’s saying only those women who have potential to child bear need answer the questions in the block. It’s a subset of women, not redefining women.

It's no different to calling women 'breeders', 'cervix-owners' or 'uterus-havers'.