How to save the NHS - (NHS Fife & pronouns)

I say keep IB's role, but pay for training, qualifications and experience.

It's not just the NHS - it's the unions too - and it's not just Scotland.

From the Fife NHS web page, training in the EDI department had been completely unbalanced for years, so this situation long predates IB's arrival.

I think change can only come from government, but assume they will attempt to procrastinate until forced to act by judgements received on this case/Darlington Nurses/For Women Scotland.

Not just NHS Fife. I have just been into a local GP surgery/clinic. Large poster up with picture of young man, slightly effeminate but not overtly. 'Alex found their safe space'. I looked at it and thought: right gender neutral name (but a female would perhaps spell it Alix?) and gender neutral pronouns. And this is meant to appeal to me how? Wished I had some dinosaur stickers.

More than £50k saved as they'd also save on pensions / national insurance etc.... :)

I think I've seen that Executive responsibility for DEI at Fife sits under their Director of Nursing. To me that makes sense in Healthcare Organisations and locks in board level responsibility with a clinician. Where it has gone very wrong is that it got delegated to a recent graduate without real life experience or appropriate knowledge and skills.

What would I do?
I'd keep DEI a board level clinical responsibility and delegate actions to HR, removing the need for a single post focused only on EDI and making sure necessary actions are embedded across the organisation.

I'd make sure the EDI section of everyone's job description follows the law and deals with all protected characteristics, not just a single issue.

I would require the board to review single sex activity metrics every month and do a root cause analysis when SS provision has failed. Whether that be for patients and staff. A biological definition of sex naturally.

I would also require board monitoring of metrics for other PC, to drive the provision of ramps and other important improvements instead of rainbow events.

I'd also do more to raise awareness amongst staff of the challenges faced by people with other PCs and seek to make substantial improvements.

Importantly, I would also look at CQC and other regulatory bodies to ensure that they also follow the law when conducting assessments. In my view, organisations should get a requires improvement grade for the safe domain if they are unable to assure SS care environments.

Depressingly, given CQC's failure to implement a new single assessment framework - and they really cocked that up - they are now looking internally at their culture to make it kinder. As they are already captured, I am alarmed at where this could end up and would encourage biological realists to respond to consultations about it. (I probably need to start a new thread, to stop this one going too far off piste, but I'll do that another day).

It's arguably that taking advice from IB has cost NHS Fife hundreds of thousands of pounds in addition to her wage. That's even if they win. If they lose I think there may be other females who have been forced to change with men who might then have a case.

I don't know if that should all be laid at IB's door though. Underqualified and over confident but, I'm sure, very kind.

I think we need to be careful not to be too negative about Isla Bumba and it is more about her post and those who put her in this position. I feel sorry for her getting this level of scrutiny.

I think NHS Fife are culpable not her.

Exactly.

Presumably Isla advised that Dr Upton's wants take total priority. Because Stonewall 'advice' led her to think that, I guess?

With no actual legal input into this process at all. And no one so much as even listening to Sandie's point of view.

A total shit show.

That is astounding. What age is she if she graduated in 2020? So, NHS Fife management basically deferred to a very young graduate with no experience in the law, no law degree or even any medical degree (although that's clearly not worth the paper it's printed on anyway if male doctors can declare themselves to be biologically female on a whim)?!

That is an absolutely enormous level of incompetence. Poor Sandie. She should have been backed up immediately and given her legal rights to single sex changing rooms without question. How has it got to this?

No offence to Ms Bumba here, but the nhs would almost certainly be a better place without these roles.

There is no need for staff to advise on pronouns. This is a nonsense function.

Legal matters need to be referred to in-house lawyers. Which the nhs already has.

I don’t think this kind of job is what Nye Bevan had in mind for a National Health Service when he created it.

Goodness, so much to pull apart here but essentially couldn’t agree with you more. £50k saved instantly!

And the astounding thing is Bumba wasn't even a gender studies graduate but apparently has a degree in epidemiology.