Thread derailment

Yes. I think one was feminist theory.

What if the financial analyser or bus driver are pregnant women, do they have anything to contribute about the language used by midwifes to them?

Why would a financial analyser or bus driver have anything to contribute to how midwives speak to their service users?

When you are the service user, you can have complete control over how you and your midwife communicate with each other.

@potpourree

The main reason for individualised and inclusive language is to build a trusting and transparent rapport with the service user. Most people we encounter speak English well enough to communicate and do not have SEND so while simplifying language and using other communication aids are relevant to adapting language, these arent issues that dominates every language choice.

Laughing to have returned here days later and found that the thread had been derailed 😂

We don't know about the friend, but Sarah herself is not among the 90%? So she is part of only a small minority among women hearing the news. I would want to know what the 90% think before changing the practice for everyone.

You're a midwife, not Goddess of the Multiverse. If you don't think women have the right to opine on how you interact with service users, then you are part of the problem not the solution

I should say in all fairness that I very much appreciate the many interesting and useful articles that @IwantToRetire posts.

When she feels the need to tell some of us off for not maintaining the correct standard of debate, or straying beyond the bounds of what she feels should be ideological orthodoxy, not so much.

Having spent too long in certain controlling environments, I have a strong reaction against posters - and it can be different posters in different contexts - who set themselves up as the Dungeon Master and determine how the rest of us should converse.

Sometimes that's an OP who is frustrated that her thread isn't going exactly how she wished.

Sometimes - there's a particular subject I have in mind where I've seen this happen multiple times - the controlling takes the form of an aggressive derailment where one poster takes over a thread and spams it with posts enforcing one particular narrative, until it's impossible to get back to the OP's point.

That's the kind of derailment I have in mind, where the obvious deliberate point of the exercise is to fill up the thread and wear down anyone who wanted to discuss the original subject.

That's not the same as a conversation organically wandering off on a tangent, which may be annoying to an OP but isn't a derailment.

It isnt about who is cleverest, it is about who understanding your remit and sticking to it. Trying to instruct a midwife how she should communicate with service users because you're passionately GC is just deluded.

No what I mean is that as part of their healthcare degree, students will discuss language and how to find the best ways to communicate with the range of service users you will encounter. What I don't know is how much they discuss trans inclusive language specifically.

I think this is a really interesting area of discussion (in general) - I find 'how best to communicate something clearly' a tricky thing, and obviously to me relies on clear definitions, so the 'target audience' as it were has the least possible ambiguity or risk of misunderstanding. But trying to balance that factual healthcare comms with 'current' accepted language can't be easy and I'm sympathetic to it.

And sometimes you end up with a total mishmash, as per that diet website that gave target caloric intake for men and women - and for non-binary people as the midpoint between the two

No it doesn't work like that because it doesnt shift your thinking for everyone you care for, just those who identify that way. So while my language might shift when I am talking about someone who is pregnant but doesn't identify as a woman, it just as quickly shifts back when I am talking about the majority of our service users who are pregnant/postnatal women.

I think in reality most people would do this, although I think in some cases e.g. they/them it can be incredibly difficult (see the Haech tribunal - even the judge writing the judgment based entirely around the person accidentally being called 'she' instead of 'they' managed to do it!)

Just to note, to avoid crossed wires, please don't take lack of comment from me on any other point as any implicit indication that I do or don't agree with anything stated in any other post on this thread.

And I just want to point out here that I am a senior midwife of many years at this point, yet I have people who have no idea how to do my job trying to tell me how I shoild communicate in the workplace and what a very basic skill that every HCP has to have "really means".

I think there needs to be some self reflection on how knowledgeable some of you think you are. Your GC views do not mean that you are now experts in communication in any profession, let alone mine. You just have an opinion about a social issue. That's it. It isnt a degree.

No what I mean is that as part of their healthcare degree, students will discuss language and how to find the best ways to communicate with the range of service users you will encounter. What I don't know is how much they discuss trans inclusive language specifically.

Flipping your language to suit your service user is a skill literally everyone in healthcare has to have.

No it doesn't work like that because it doesnt shift your thinking for everyone you care for, just those who identify that way. So while my language might shift when I am talking about someone who is pregnant but doesn't identify as a woman, it just as quickly shifts back when I am talking about the majority of our service users who are pregnant/postnatal women.

Anyway my point is thay HCPs are constantly reflecting and adapting their language to provide better care for their service users.

Most women don't consider what language they'd prefer to hear when hearing that kind of news. All we can listen to are the women who have heard this kind of news coupled with associated research. Something like 90% of pregnancies where the baby has DS are terminated.

The thing us, no-one posting here has any obligation to each other (aside from abiding to talk guidelines). Everyone gets out different things from the conversations. Some want a serious discussion about feminist theory where others find that intimidating. Some want to find a community of people to have both serious and more lighthearted chat and others find that frivolous and irritating. Being told that the threads must go a certain way or handwringng that the level of conversation has declined comes across as being scolded by a teacher or professor that the class isn't staying on track. None of us signed up for a class.

I personally find it tedious when there are demands from other posters to 'ignore the derailers'. It becomes a far bigger part of the discussion than actually answering the points, mainly for the benefit of lurkers, but that's my opinion. It also generally highlights the inconsistencies in the 'oooh, it's such an echo chamber here but I can't actually articulate beyond be kind!' approach.

I personally found it deeply annoying on the long runing Sandie Peggie threads that some posters who clearly wanted pretty much a facsimilie of Tribunal Tweets, demanded that other posters not post about anything else, even in breaks or when we were waiting, rather than, you know, reading TT. But again, my opinion.

I personally find some of the conversations somewhat going over old ground but appreciate that there's an everchanging roster of people coming on and off the board who might not know previous conversations. (Although I probably wouldn't have waded in with criticisms about the board without actually knowing or finding out the details about the FWR split).

I have read what that mum Sarah has to say about her views and about her friend, and while I would hope health professionals will respect the mother who asked for the word "chance" to be used instead of "risk" that is also not a neutral wording, not if it was to be applied by default to everyone.

The blog post was specifically about pregnancy screening, right? So I would want to balance what Sarah and her self-selected group of friends prefer against other women who might be a lot quieter than she is about their feelings and preferences, women who might keep especially quiet around a Sarah. Fiercely object? No. Quietly feel that bit worse about it all? You decide.

To be fair I am not even sure if there could be such a thing as a totally neutral wording that's right for everyone. Context is all.

No I'm not afraid to not use it. I can deliver better care by using it. There's been lots of language suggested to me that Ive rejected. For instance, routinely referring to contractions as surges.

https://www.kidspot.com.au/parenting/its-time-for-doctors-to-change-their-language-my-child-is-not-a-risk/news-story/76b6b783118aaba9fe29e950a6b36470

You read what that mum has to say and whether you think it is likely a parent to a child with DS would fiercely object to her message.

My students often use that terminology, too. I don't know how much theyve discussed what language to use in university.

I don't know if they've discussed it but it's a kind of drip-drip at university. For example the university where I work asks students about their preferred pronouns (I guess when they register) and although it's not compulsory most students do it and then it's propagated and there's other software that displays their pronouns more or less by default in contexts where you wouldn't necessarily need or expect it. So no-one discusses it but it's in the air.

Echoing every word here.

The more easily you find yourself able to "flip" to using language that you know describes a fake truth, the more scared you should be.