Women’s rights to same-sex health care

"Has anyone ever seen a poster in a hospital telling women that they have a right to same sex care?"

I'm pleased to say I have. I had surgery on my throat about two years ago at Bristol Royal Infirmary and in the corridor of the ward I was on was a very prominent poster stating that same-sex care was available to all patients who required it. It felt very encouraging to see it.

In terms of the law, as I state in the article, there are regulations introduced by the coalition government in 2014 requiring medical staff to take account of patient preferences including as to same sex care, but they are being ignored. I persuaded the British Medical Union which represent doctors to change their publication "Core Ethics Guidance" to make reference to these regulations, but the General Medical Council has so far refused to change its guidance on intimate examinations. The Care Quality Commission has produced guidance on the regulations but has failed to engage with the medical or nursing professions about the enforcement of the regulations. Has anyone ever seen a poster in a hospital telling women that they have a right to same sex care? The government needs for force the medical and nursing professions to change their codes, and publicise this right and strengthen this right.
The NHS is short of nurses and so wants to encourage more men into nursing. Fine by me. There are plenty of men who need nursing care. When my daughter was 12 or 13, only just young enough for my wife to have a right to stay in hospital with her she made it known to the nursing staff that my daughter only wanted showered by female nurses. Whilst my daughter was still a little groggy from anaesthetic and whilst my wife was momentarily away, a male nurse came into her room insisting that he was (alone) going to shower my daughter. He even told her that he became a nurse so he could see young girls naked. My wife arrived back in time and sent him packing.
It is important to remember that the medical and nursing profession attract some wonderful human beings, but that they also attract those who want to abuse or hurt others. The profession gives them both the opportunity and the cloak of respectability. It is essential to have some redlines to protect patients such as single sex wards and same sex care. These can never guarantee safety, but they are a start.
As to the report on rapes in hospitals, those attacked are not just patients, but also medical staff and visitors. Those committing these crimes are not just medics, but patients, visitors, contractors. Hospitals should be able to control access to patients, in a similar way to how schools protect pupils, such as controlled access to wards and more CCTV.

Your comments are of neither use nor ornament, go and fifth column somewhere else.

See also 'no male cleaners in public toilets'.

Ah thank you. So a rather pathetic attempt at a reductio ad absurdum argument but without the details that would actually make it clear what is being argued.

It's a bit like watching a number 11 batter walking out to the crease needing 60 runs to win with 5 balls remaining. They know that they've lost but they have to pretend that they're still in the game.

Isn't it one of the numerous delusional claims made by extreme transactivists? That if you think women are entitled to single sex hospital wards then you're demanding no male doctors, porters, nurses, visitors etc?

The sound you hear is the bottom of a barrel being scraped 😄

I read this as a “men need single sex services too”, possibly to try to undermine the thrust of this thread. To which most FWR posters would say “of course! The Equality Act 2010 protected characteristic of sex covers both men and women in circumstances where they need single sex provision” and none of us have an issue with that, provided it is a proportionate act.

I know that it is very late at night but I am really struggling with the point that you are trying to make. Would you care to have another go?

It's not quite as simple as it should be. To have a truly single sex ward would require all males to be banned from the female ward, and likewise females from the male ward. In theory I support this - but I'm not sure how it would be able to make it work without a wholesale change of recruitment from the NHS. When my son had an issue at 14 I had to quite forcefully demand an appointment with a male GP but it wasn't taken particularly seriously by the receptionist. There needs to be proper reform to make this happen.

Very pleased at the interest my article has sparked on Mumsnet. I remember a few months back seeing a post on Mumsnet by a woman who had undergone an intimate examination by a male doctor. She was not happy, but said that she felt that if she complained she would be discriminating against him on the grounds of his sex. Is this really where we are at? A woman's right to control access to her body is trumped by the right of a male medic to practise his profession on her? This is appalling.
Apologies for not putting any source for my comment about female surgeons having better outcomes that males. There is a strict word limit and no footnotes allowed. As one post comments there is quite a lot of evidence on line. As to why there is a difference, I don't think that it is misogyny - unless there is evidence that women treated by male surgeons have worse outcomes than men treated by male surgeons. My theory is that women surgeons may feel the need to prove themselves, or simply because women care more. To be fair, it is worth noting that on average female surgeons will be younger than male surgeons and to make a true comparison you need to control for the age of the surgeons, or for length of career. It may be that younger surgeons have better outcomes than senior surgeons, perhaps because of their recent training, or a need to prove themselves.
I cannot help wonder, however, whether if hospitals monitored outcomes for female and male surgeons, we might find that suddenly outcomes from male surgeons improve! After all, I don't see per se why women would have greater surgical skills.

Another point that may be of interest. I have read reports that in the US female surgeons have to use the same medical instruments as male surgeons despite the substantial difference in average hand size. I have tried to find out the position in the UK. It appears that in some hospitals there may be different sized instruments, but single use instrument come in one size only. This clearly needs to change.

I do hope readers will press their MPs for same sex care, and call upon women's organisations to campaign on this issue. This is an important issue that needs fighting for. Apart from emergencies, it is surely a fundamental human right.

The thing is they had 4 day surgery 7 bed bays/rooms all were mixed sex and they weren't even split by surgeon I know this as I had to walk past them on my way in and out and the same groups of Dr's were checking on patients split over all of them.
Being conscious when everyone else is still out of it is rather informative

Is the statement the author made true ?

Dear God, this horrifies me. All my surgery had been gynae related at Liverpool Womens so no men on those wards thank God. I’ve told my DH if I have to go on a general ward anywhere and there are men there I want to leave asap. ICU is different, but i’m not staying in a ward with men who can get out of bed.

That's a good question - are the rates of rape / sexual assaults higher in UK hospitals compared to other countries? I've no idea. There are all sorts of factors.
Some building designs enable assaults rather than prevent them
Lack of staffing and poor awareness by staff of the need to safeguard patients from predators.
Poor security
Lax policies about visitors
Predatory staff and colleagues being too intimidated to report them... etc etc

The Victoria Hospital Blackpool rape / murder of a patient linked upthread is a grim example of a toxic organisation failing to provide even the most basic of safety with staff completely failing to notice (or deliberately covering up) that a woman had been raped and murdered in her bed (likely by a staff member).

At the end of the day - women's safety and health needs just don't matter enough to senior NHS staff. The unforgivable maternity scandals continue unabated despite countless enquiries. Medical misogyny is a thing. I can guarantee that the majority of NHS Trusts who've wailed about the SC judgment & having to provide safe single sex showers, wards, toilets will have inadequate maternity services, have numerous allegations against staff and have endless rainbow lanyards, flags along with policies that intimidate staff out of raising legitimate concerns.

Until these senior staff are properly held to account for their failures to provide basic safety and safe medical care, they'll sit around in their offices writing polices about how to wedge male sex offenders onto women's wards. Link for those who think this is exaggeration:

https://archive.ph/6PUIm

I had day surgery yesterday at the Victoria hospital in fife and was put in a 7 bay room which was mixed sex, it didn't make me feel safe or comfortable and I was up and dressed before I'd been back on the ward for 5 mins as I'm very difficult to knock out and keep out, I'm usually awake before I hit resus. I know that in that respect im lucky but most aren't and were waking up to men in the bed next to them with the curtains wide open, the fear on the faces of some of those women was clear to see even from across the room.
We must return to fully single sex wards

As a non-britton (central europe) I can't see how being able to limit myself to a female medical practitioner would make me more equal. It feels a bit Talibanish.

(Taking the female surgeons superiority topic aside).

Yes there isn't an equality in the medical knowledge about male and female bodies and biochemistry. We need more women in those fields. But we need every health care practitioner to deliver a good standard of services, not to give up and say "if you don't like it, wait for a female doctor".
If someone isn't good enough for women, they aren't fit to practice at all.

I'm wondering now what is so much different between UK and big chunk of the continent to lead to so different wishes.

ETA: I see now the post above mine, which covers similar topic, thanks @MrsOvertonsWindow
I'm now wondering whether the UK is so much worse in this, or whether we have so much lower reporting rate.

(And I absolutely agree with single sex spaces being available wherever it is relevant and with them being actually single sex)

Getting back to the issues raised in the article rather than obsessing about one side issue, it points out that this is what many women's experience is of healthcare:

"Hundreds of women who sought to serve in our armed forces have come forward alleging that they were sexually abused in medical examinations during recruitment. Operation Pianora, led by Wiltshire Police, is currently investigating over 500 reports of incidents from the 1970s to 2016 at locations across the UK.

In When We Are at Our Most Vulnerable, a 2023 Women’s Rights Network report, Prof Jo Phoenix exposed the extraordinary number of rapes (around 1,500) and sexual assaults (around 4,000) in hospitals, almost invariably of women and girls, from January 2019 to October 2022 which includes the COVID period when access was strictly controlled".

There is a massive push for women to be framed as unreasonable or petty or pearl clutching for wanting single sex intimate care, single sex wards, showers and toilets when in hospital. It's all part of the open campaign to roll back on women's rights, to deny sex based differences with the usual useful idiots in the NHS promoting it.

The data and repeated cases of medics in court / sanctioned and struck off for sex offences suggests this is another issue the NHS is failing to tackle.

It's so difficult for women to become surgeons in a misogynist profession that I suspect the ones who do make it have to be excellent. So you get an excellent female surgeon but some of the men are less competent.

No difference in recovery/success despite female surgeons getting the more complex cases?

Yes. And from the article I linked, it is being studied.

Do you see my point though? When the author of the article tags that as fact on the end of his piece, when it is not proven fact, it detracts from what else he has written?

This is the way I read things. Is there a stand out claim being made that jumps out. If yes, then fact check it. If the claim is not proven, then I won't bother fact checking the rest. It might all be totally true, but that one stand out claim just causes me to switch off.

Here, among other places.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2833145