To think that a hospital should have a female gynecologist?

[crazyspaniel]

My local hospital only has male gynecologists. If I want to see a female practitioner I have to travel 40 miles. In the end I went to my local hospital and found the whole experience somewhat traumatic - the fact that the doctors were male was part of the reason for finding it so horrible and humiliating.

Is it really so hard to hire a female gynecologist? I get that consultants are often of a generation when not many women went into medicine (and particularly surgery), but there are now more women than men becoming doctors and one of the doctors in the room was SHO level (or whatever they call them now), so not of that generation. I really think this is one area of medicine where there should be female quotas and where each hospital should have at least one female practitioner.

Sadly, the NHS is a dinosaur and will take a long time to catch up with the kind of equality and diversity procedures that exist in other caring professions.

Medicine still has a culture of behaving as if providing care to a human is rather like fixing a car; the relationships between patient and medical staff and the wishes of the patient are still often seen as some kind of optional extra. This is very sad because many people do not access health care because of fear - that is a far wider issue than female patients and gynecology

Eventually it will catch up with the rest of society; doctors will stop behaving as if medicine is some kind of old boys' network and exemption from sex discrimination will become part of the recruitment process to make sure women who want it will have access to female doctors, as they have access to female workers in other caring professions. It will no doubt take a many more years yet, but the NHS will have to sort this out eventually.

creighton
"the patient has a right to choose who sees her/him."

That is not true. A patient has the right to request a referral to a particular doctor, and may use their judgement as to whether the subsequent additional wait for a popular doctor is worth it.

A patient who is referred to a particular doctor does not have the right to an appointment by that Cosultant. Rather, any doctor in their team is allowed to have that delegated duty, as long as they are competent.

A patient who is not referred to a particular doctor takes a gamble on what team they end up with. They have the right to ask for a second opinion, but not the right to insist that the second opinion is given by a particular doctor.

Additionally, as a courtesy, a hospital will respect the wishes of a patient who wishes to be examined by someone of his or her sex, as long as they can accomodate it.

The patient does NOT have the right to demand it. Rather, their choice is one between whether the service offered is acceptable, or if they would rather not be treated.

As I said earlier, any patient who requested a particular race of doctor for treatment because it made them feel uncomfortable, would and should be told in no uncertain terms that this is not a reasonable request, and the hospital will NOT accomodate it.

It should, IMO, be the same for sex.

Lougle, are you advocating we get rid of gynecology as an area of medicine then?

By your reasoning it is incredibly sexist to have a type of medicine that is based on somebody's biological sex. After all, we don't have doctors whose specialist area is whiteness, so why should we have doctors who specialise in only vaginas?

Am boggled that anyone could consider the range of reasons a woman might prefer a woman to examine her vagina / internally than a man, and decree "get over yourself".

This thread has shown up some really depressing attitudes.

Here's a question.

Ok. If you were going to choose a birthing partner between your mum or dad who would you honestly choose?

Lougle, can you really not see the difference between someone being not liking black people (say) and someone not being able to cope with having a male doctor's hand up her vagina because she's been sexually assaulted? Are you seriously saying that the latter is no better than a racist? That it "is not a reasonable request" for her to want to see a female doctor? I get what you are saying about the logistics of requesting a particular doctor, and how that can't be guaranteed, but I find the analogy between race and sex quite fallacious.

Andrew you ask what do I think should be a priority for the police - catching a drink/drug driver or catching a rapist. I say catching a rapist.

You say that the drunk driver could go on to kill someone. Sure, however being arrested will likely give them a bit of pause for thought about doing it again, even assuming that they cannot be breathylised, other evidence is not available, another doctor can't get there, or the original doctor can go there after seeing the rape victim. The rapist on the other hand has already raped someone.

And I think it is fair to say that for someone who has been raped, the world does stop, and your earlier remark still makes me feel really uncomfortable.

MillyR no, of course not. Doctors specialise in bodily systems, and anatomical regions. 'Vaginas' fall into the latter category.

"By your reasoning it is incredibly sexist to have a type of medicine that is based on somebody's biological sex."

Absolute rubbish. Of course it isn't sexist. I mean, if you think about it, gynaecology is open to any human who needs the service. It just happens that 100% of the people who need it are female. It is interesting, though, that men's reproductive organs are lumped in with the generic 'urology', rather than having a specific branch.

Putting it another way, who would advocate for the barring of women from performing medical duties relating to the male reproductive system? How would one feel if they, as a woman, trained in urology, but were only allowed to treat female patients? How would one feel if they were told that they couldn't train in urology, simply because they were a female?

Every patient has the right to request a doctor of the same sex. That doesn't mean they get to have one.

Just think how many men have to cope with having intimate care provided by a female? How uncomfortable must it be as a man to have a 19 year old female staring at your genitals? Funny how that is 'acceptable'.

crazy, it does sound as though you have an issue over and above a simple case of embarrassment. You know this already, but you must get your smear tests done regularly. This is going to sound patronising however I say it, but maybe you should talk to someone?

Can't always expect a hospital to have the 'right' gender in every field especially when there are many factors which may cause imbalance in the fields women and men go into. And you defiantly can't recruit based only on gender for medicine.

Eeek, I've only read your first and last pages, crazyspaniel - I've obviously missed quite a bit of important stuff. Sorry.

I came here to say the consultant you saw sounds like an arse. They come in all flavours & genders, sadly! I walked out of the last gynae consultation I had - the guy was an arrogant prick and I felt creeped out while he was fiddling around in there. That's despite having no issues at all about 'that sort of thing' and have even voluntarily been a case study for a class of 20 med students!

The other thing I was going to mention was asking for a psych/counselling consultation prior to further treatment, as you have some issues that require sensitive handling From your posts on this page, it looks as though you've already discussed that - good luck! And breathe

Sorry OP, I didn't see the whole thread (failed to click on 'show all messages') so I've repeated things that others have already said.

It's entirely reasonable to want a doctor of your sex to perform an intimate examination.

You might not get one because of circumstances but I think it's disgraceful of people to tell you to 'get over yourself'.

I worked (not in the NHS but in a job that brought me into regular contact with it) in an area with a large Bangladeshi and Pakistani population. Many men would not allow their wives to be treated by male doctors for anything, let alone gynaecological problems or pregnancy and childbirth.

If they couldn't get a female doctor and nurse these women didn't see anyone. It was gross discrimination but my sympathies were with the female patients.

crazyspaniel for the person who has irrational fear of the colour of someone's skin, it doesn't feel unreasonable to request care by someone of the same skin colour.

I have never suggested that a woman shouldn't be able to request such a provision. However, I have to say, if it was that much of an issue to me, I would have phoned the department prior to the appointment and said 'This is really difficult for me. Could I have a female gynae?' How hard would that be?

What I am saying, is that hospitals are for medical care. That means that if there is the opportunity to be fluffy and nice, by all means accomodate preferences.

Again, I give an example of race/culture:

A person who has cultural needs to be separate from people of the opposite sex (prior to the legislation to separate sexes in wards), and was fairly well, could be accomodated on the Neuro ward I worked on. We would move a whole bay of patients around to jiggle it so that we could separate the woman, in this case, from the men.

However, if the patient was very poorly, it was simply not possible, because medical need trumped cultural need. In that situation, we would have to say 'not well enough', and wait until the patient was well enough.

This is a situation, where the patient asks for a female and there isn't one. Would she rather have a neuro doctor examine her reproductive organs, so that she has a female doctor??

SardineQueen To be precise and it is an important distinction: the alleged rapist and alleged drunk-driver. Both are presumed innocent at the stage we are talking about.

Once the FME has set off to deal with one case she must see it through. There is no other way to run a service of any sort. On any day there might be no female FME who can physically get there in time, especially in thinly-populated areas.

If you are familiar with my posts you will belive that I did not want to make you or anyone feel uncomfortable. I pointed out uncomfortable facts, which is not the same thing.

Lougle, it doesn't 'just happen' that people who have female reproductive organs are female - it is the basis of whether we categorise people on their births as male or female. It is not some weird coincidence. Gynecology is no more open to everyone than paediatrics is. It is open solely to women. Because clearly both the NHS and wider society believes that sex matters, to a far greater degree than anybody believes race matters. To try and make out that biological sex - by definition a biological reality is equivalent to race, by definition a social construct is absurd, and you are having to go through all manner of ridiculous mental gymnastics to make out they are even vaguely similar.

I didn't argue that men should be barred from gynecology. I simply believe that women should be able to ask for a female doctor and females should be recruited into areas of medicine where there is a shortage of female doctors under exemption from sex discrimination laws, because it is in the patient's interests for this to happen. This already happens in other caring professions.

It is a ridiculous waste of female nurse's time that they are being made to stand around, despite being highly qualified, and chaperone male doctors just because the NHS has failed to recruit an adequate number of female doctors.

"SardineQueen To be precise and it is an important distinction: the alleged rapist and alleged drunk-driver. Both are presumed innocent at the stage we are talking about."

Well at this stage it is highly unlikely that anyone has been arrested for the rape. Sorry alleged rape. So I guess you mean alleged victim.

So your question is, who gets priority, an alleged drink driver or an alleged rape victim. I would say the alleged rape victim. Although I would hope that the police would not treat the alleged victim in a way that suggested that as her rape was not yet proven in a court of law it was possible that it hadn't happened.

I am finding your posts on this increasingly insensitive TBH.

Do you think of people who report muggings or burglary as alleged victims?

Your view is, a woman walks into a police station in a right state. She alleges that she has been raped. Clearly this is just an allegation, to be clear. They say she must have an internal examination. They say it will be a male doctor. She says no. They say the world doesn't stop just because she has been raped and there's nothing they can do, like it or lump it. There is a woman doctor but she's on her way to take some blood from an alleged drink driver so tough. She can drop her allegations and leave it there or have a man.

That may well be how it works in the police at present but it's hardly how you would want it to work, surely?

This idea that when a woman walks into a police station and says she has been raped, everyone must say "well to be exact it's just an allegation" and treat her as such - it seems awful.

If a woman walks into a police station and says she has been raped surely they must proceed as if she has, in fact, been raped?

SardineQueen I would not say alleged victim - the best word is complainant which is exactly what she is.

Even if someone is arrested he is still presumed innocent unless convicted. So she is still the complainant.

Callous, insensitive, call me what you like. You still don't say what happens if there is no FME on call who can physically get there in time.

MillyR To call for a new exemptions from the laws against sex and similar discrimination is, if you will forgive the euphemism, to spit into the wind. It is impossible under EU law - which has in many ways been a trump for women. You simply cannot have a rule under which no more than a fixed proportion of those training for a given line of work can be men, or women.

They used to have such a thing in many fields of study in many parts of Europe including, unofficially here: it was called by the Latin expression numerus clausus, closed number, and it was aimed at the Jews. Let's not have it back.

Andrewofgg, there are ways of working with exemption from sex discrimination laws. It is entirely legal, frequently done in the UK,l and does not have to involve quotas.

Doctors and other medical staff seem to exist in a culture of entitlement where they think that sex discrimination applies solely to their jobs and not to the position of the patient.

Andrew,
If a doctor is examining a person who has been raped, then the person who has raped the victim it is a rapist. When the police arrest someone they are presumed innocent, but when examining a victim there is a presumption that he or she is telling the truth. So the choice is between a suspected drunk driver who is presumed innocent, and a namless, faceless, but guilty rapist. It is only once the police can put a name and face to the rapist that the presumption of innocence takes hold. Think of it this way if you find the body of a murder victim, you do not refer to the murderer as possibly innocent, you refer to the person arrested for the murder as having a presumption of innocence.
And do you seriously think a male doctor wants to examine a teenage girl who has been raped, and is terrified of men and is obviously find the examination traumatic.
Rape crisis centres and women's refuges are exempt from sex discrimination laws, and can hire only women. So there is an arguement for putting in quotos for doctors who perform intimiate examinations.

Andrew,
So a murder victim is not in fact a victim in your eyes unless someone is prosecuted for it?
And in actual fact rape is a crime against the state in England so complainant is not the right term, as it is up to the state if they want to press charges.

Oh and the military have sex discrimination and disability discrimination rules. There is a quota for 100% men in some branches such as the SAS.