Statement from the Society of Radiographers re Mammograms

What happens if they have employed males illegally at this point?

Can they fire them? Probably not because of employment law? Can they make their position redundant? Possibly not because the position is still open. If they try to move them, can the staff refuse?

It strikes me there may be all kinds of legal implication here. And wanna bet whose side the unions will take.

If it blows up to a legal battle then the public will find out and they may be exposed to legal liabilities.

And it will massively damage public trust in the service.

So they've tried this shit on instead.

NO.

I am CONVINCED they will pass the motion to allow men to work as mammographers as a result. Purely because it gets them out of a hole.

Two system staffing for a very specific type screening

Q1

With a man or a woman
[ so the woman has to be ok alone in a room half naked with a man manhandling her breasts when the man picked this as his career path ]

So a shorter wait will happen
some women self exclude from the screening by notice so women who have not been notified get an early invitation.
But on the day rejection of the man in screening services is costly.

So the provider has a choice
to offer 2 Q options
• Women only staff or
• Mixed sex staff.
so the mixed staff Q is shorter by default
OR
blame the woman for abusing the screening system and man providing the screening and remove the womans ability to access the screening service
so more screening appointments are available

V

Q2
With a woman only provision

Where every woman who would go to screening is in a First in first out Q

An important thing to note is that if the NHS said some men it is saying that from that point on 50% or more of the staff it hires will be men.

Many posters who have had both have said the opposite, that the mammogram is more uncomfortable and intrusive. Of course, women’s experiences vary.

How many mammograms have you had @BeRoseSloth ?

And no, the ‘chances are’ you’ll see a female gynaecologist.

I used to work in apprenticeships, and have seen how well structured and well implemented apprenticeships can benefit women, especially in their thirties and forties. There is already a Level 4 Apprenticeship in Mammography, but I think - I might be wrong - that it’s only open to those already working in the screening service. The only qualifications stipulated are Level 2 (GCSE or Functional Skills) passes in English and Maths.

One solution would be to open this route to any woman with appropriate qualifications and experience and devise flexible and family friendly working patterns to attract applicants.

If a woman has to see a gynaecologist the chances are you’ll be seeing a man who then puts his hand up your floof and has a good feel around. Surely that’s more intimate than a mammogram? If you’re a man who finds a testicular lump you’ll be sent for an ultrasound which involves the sonographer moving your dick around to get it out of the way and then she/he fiddles around with your balls. That’s fairly intimate isn’t it? I cannot fathom what all the fuss is about.

I started to type a response to @Brefugee but saw you’d already posted @borntobequiet and said what I was going to say.

Most mammograms are done as screening appointments. If the NHS could promise absolutely 100% of the time that every woman in every single screening unit up and down the UK day in, day out would have the option to refuse a male, and that any woman who refuses a male mammographer would be seen as quickly as the women who were happy having a male carrying out the mammograms and the female mammographer waiting room wouldn’t be crowded in comparison to the male mammographer waiting room, or that they wouldn’t have to go to another unit elsewhere because the one in the local supermarket car park only has a male mammographer working out of it on certain days, and that system would never, ever break down then perhaps it might be acceptable.

Chances of that happening in reality? Zero.

We need more staff - cos we are going to have to move the male staff we've been employing illegally and it's all your fault if you don't enable us to continue employing them

Fuck off.

because we clearly have a problem - if we don't recruit more staff the wait will be longer

It’s a screening programme for healthy women, not for those already diagnosed. There is no “wait” as such, there are no “queues”. Staffing has been a problem for years, but it’s not clear why this is. Many staffing problems in the NHS are the direct result of insufficient funding.

Employing men as mammographers is likely to deter women from attending screening, and will inevitably increase costs, as chaperones would be required. How is this a sensible solution?

Also, the SoR statement makes clear, it’s largely driven to improve career opportunities for men.

Perhaps all the bloke hcp’s who are so very interested in womens health care could be directed towards more menopause training? More research, deeper understanding of early symptoms, and pushing for better and more availability of treatments in a field of medicine that’s desperately needed and sadly misunderstood or ignored.

Not as interesting as a career development opportunity for those who want a hands on experience though.

https://www.sor.org/news/ezine/male-mammographer-motion-sparks-fierce-debate-at-t

https://www.sor.org/news/trade-union-ir/radiographers-call-for-breast-screening-to-be-carr

Both articles from 2017

This has been ongoing for at least 5 years so unsure that recent SC judgment is necessarily what's prompted it

This doesn't work in terms of consent and trust though. Sorry.

If the default is female you don't get situations where a woman is off sick, so a male fills in at the last minute and women are put on the spot in terms of having to make a decision with the alternative having to go back to the bottom of the waiting list.

This puts women under undue pressure to consent when they don't want to and undermines trust in the system.

Unfortunately I simply do not believe it won't happen and that makes me less likely to engage fully stop.

The timing doesn't help. I now totally believe they have a member (members) of staff who have been breeching women's rights as a result. I think they are more bothered about those employees than the women they are supposed to serve. They are throwing women under the bus with an emotional blackmail on consent saying more women will be seen quicker.

IT IS BULLSHIT.

My bullshit detector has gone off. They don't care about me. I don't trust them.

I am not going to be manipulated by this coercive crap about the cool girls.

The suggestion upthread is that yes, it is probably the case that trans-identifying men have been employed, but due to the internal trans-related NHS policies, staff were told that it would be illegal for them to tell patients that their mammographer was a TiM. The SC ruling now means that the NHS can no longer lie about the sex of a mammographer, and therefore has to think fast about how to continue to employ these men.

A breast cancer surgeon is a very different level of professional than a mammographer working for the screening service. There is really no comparison.

Tell me you've never had a mammogram without telling me you've never had a mammogram.

You know, this is a very interesting notion.
Has a male already been employed somewhere? Or, have they been enrolled on a training course?
This could explain the press announcement and lovely videos of cool girls saying they don't mind after the supreme court ruling came into force.

because we clearly have a problem - if we don't recruit more staff the wait will be longer.

since so many women don't mind, the queues for everyone will be shorter than if they recruit nobody or try to recruit only women.

Our health is ALREADY at risk due to delays of having no staff. Instead of knee-jerking your way through life, employ a little critical thinking.

As i outlined: NOBODY will be forced to go to a man. Tbh i don't want to go to a man either, if i thought i had something wrong with me, that may change. But regular screenings? nope, i want a woman.

Yes, I can see now that there is a sub plot and intention.......that may well have escalated since the supreme court ruling, or maybe even in direct response to it.

And who administers all this preference? That's at least another admin worker employed, along with more chaperones, as someone on the other thread pointed out. How is this cost-effective?

Again, there's no shortage - or certainly no data to back up the claim that there is a shortage. No-one is waiting through lack of staff, no-one has produced concrete figures.

The stories in the media are a reaction to the initial (deleted then replaced later) press release from the Society of Radiographers, so how can reporting on a conference motion that the SoR themselves flagged to the press be "shit stirring"?
Or were women not supposed to even know this was happening until it was all implemented and too late to do anything about?
There is no shortage of mammographers or extended wait times in the screening programme, even if there were then recruiting and managing the logistics of chaperoning male practitioners would be costly and reduce the success of the screening programme.
So why are the SoR doing this? And why are they so unhappy that it has been reported about, why do they think that it is a problem that patients now know about this proposal?

We already discussed how this won't work for women who can't fill in their own forms because of disability or language barrier on the other thread.

This is what I think too.

They are trying to find a fudge to allow someone to keep their job rather than uphold the rights of women (and prevent themselves from being found out and being liable for past cases where a male has illegally been carrying out mammograms)

The motion will be pushed through to save their own necks and budget and to hell with how women feel.

I do not trust them now for this attempt to hide their shit and then brush it as if women are being prudes.

This situation should never have arisen in the first place and it's not on women to fix.

"Why are you so bothered about men doing it?"

Because TUBE was so common there was an acronym for it.
Times change but human nature doesn't.

It was very much planned, wasn't it? As someone on the other thread said - there's never been news stories on anything else done by the Society of Radiographers at any of their conferences! Why now? Why this one?

There is no long wait for mammography screening. In my area it’s done in mobile units and you get an invitation when your mammogram is due for the dates they’re in the area. It’s a small space with 2 radiographers who swap round regularly between reception/waiting/changing (all one area) and the mammogram room. There is a sign on the entrance saying only women are allowed in. It’s very much a small, intimate women only space.
There would be little room for a chaperone therefore you’d be in room alone with a male radiographer. Since they swap round you’d be welcomed into the very small changing area by a man.
I could see this set up easily putting some women off from going along for their breast screening.

There will have been a good reason the breast screening service was set up as female only. There needs to be good evidence those reasons are no longer valid in order to change it without it causing a drop in uptake of mammography screening and costing lives.