Male hospital staff

[ToadRage]

I don't really know how i feel about this or if I'm just being a bit precious. I had an appointment for a transvaginal ultrasound a couple of weeks ago. I was a bit shocked to find the sonographer was a man. A female nurse was present and she did all the talking, he barely said a word to me. I have had ultrasounds before but they have always been done by women. He was professional and nothing out of the ordinary happened but I felt a bit awkward as I haven't had a man down there except my husband in 20+ years, not even a male doctor. Am I wrong in thinking I should have been told it was going to be done by a man, maybe given the option to request a woman or AIBU?

Exactly this. The NHS knows that it is detrimental to the majority of women’s health and mental wellbeing to be faced with a man in that sort of situation.

They should definitely not be encouraging men into such jobs for reasons I pointed out previously. If there is a shortage of female applicants (which I find hard to believe but let’s pretend), then they need to run programmes to encourage women - not men.

It’s interesting how keen the NHS is to act in a way detrimental to women (reduce the effectiveness of women’s health literature by refusing to use the word woman but keeping it for men, failing to treat women’s pain as seriously as they do men - denying pain relief etc, failing to deal with the mind blowing level of rapes, sexual assaults and sexual harassment on women by male staff, running programmes to incentivise men into sensitive jobs but not women etc). It’s almost like they view us as second class citizens.

lol of course not. But increased optionality in any system comes with a cost. That is basic systems logic, economics, and frankly common sense.

You seem blinkered by a particular agenda to the extent it’s eroding the quality of your critical thinking.

I hope you have made a full recovery.

When you had your routine scan you didn’t know you had breast cancer. So if a woman feels very uncomfortable with a man handling her breast in what is already an very unpleasant situation, and she weighs that up with the risks of missing a routine scan that’s but the same as the benefit of hindsight you currently have.

Instead of criticising women for having boundaries of privacy around men (and let’s face a huge chunk of the female population have already had bad experiences with men that colour their views), why don’t you acknowledge that the NHS are in the wrong for recruiting men (there is no operational reason to not keep this as a female only service, the NHS have decided to increase the number of men in this area even though it is detrimental to most women) and have a bit of sympathy for the women who are suffering because of the institutionalised misogyny?

Wow. Equality but only if you and pick and choose when right?

It doesn’t need to be an option though. They could just use the Equality Act exemptions and employ women - women’s health is enough of a specialist area.

You seem blinkered by a particular agenda to the extent it’s eroding the quality of your critical thinking.

You seem to be projecting. Nothing wrong with my critical thinking.

I turned down a smear by a male gynaecologist when I was in for cancer investigations. The examination was humiliating enough. I waited for a female GP ( the hoops you have to jump through for that now)to do it even though I was on the 2 week cancer list. Smears are hugely painful for me,not straight forward and I literally couldn’t have tolerated a male doing it.

And how would you deal with:

1. all of the male staff that have already trained and are working in women’s health? Just sack them, at both a financial and monetary cost to the NHS?
2. the fact the NHS is already short staffed, yet your proposal restricts its ability to recruit even further
3. females wanting to work in men’s health? Prevent them from doing so?

Another example illustrating my previous point….

Should say “capacity and monetary”* in item 1.

We’ve just had laws in re female toilets. Staggering that some don’t think we shouldn’t have the same for intimate treatment even though it’s 10 times worse.

Frankly I don’t care about male staff being out of work. I’m sure they will have skills that can be used elsewhere across the NHS. Change needs to start happening now. It’s archaic what we have at the moment.

You seem to be very confused. I am advocating for equality for women in our treatment by the NHS ie not being treated worse than men and ideally having the risk of sexual assault minimised not enabled.

I am also suggesting that there is no need for men to be in such specialist women’s health jobs - they’ve got access to the ENTIRE spectrum of jobs - they don’t need to be encouraged into women’s health to the detriment of women.

Why do you think it is ‘equality’ for the NHS to encourage men (a small proportion of whom they know will end up being sex offenders) to work in female health areas where they will have intimate contact with women?

As an example. There are fewer than 200 male midwives in the U.K. A quick search gives 3 high profile cases where a male midwife has been convicted of sex offences. I don’t know how many low profile cases there are. The NHS seem to care so little they don’t hold that data.

Even if it is 3 in total out of 200 that is pretty horrendous - no?

No, I haven’t made a full recovery. And that’s the point I’m trying to make here. Cancer is devastating. Even more so when you’re faced with a diagnosis from a routine scan for an advanced cancer you had no idea was there. The cancer l have doesn’t form lumps, it spreads through the tissues and has no symptoms until the later stages. It can spread undetected and is very difficult to discern on scans, so tumours are usually large and later stage when they’re discovered. And the terrifying thing is that these are not rare cancers - they make up a significant proportion of breast cancer diagnoses, and they are HR positive, which means a significantly increased risk of recurrence.

Mammography can be a life saver. I appreciate that we’re coming at this from different viewpoints, but once you have been faced with the reality of a cancer diagnosis it changes you. My mammographer was a man. Completely professional and detached. My take away from what happened to me was not that he was a man, it was that he was sufficiently qualified and experienced in the positioning for the scans, to expose the cancer that was there.

why don’t you acknowledge that the NHS are in the wrong for recruiting men (there is no operational reason to not keep this as a female only service

Surely that would fall foul of equality legislation? It appears you only want that to work one way.

if there was a suspicion of cancer to the extent that you were referred under he two week rule, why on earth would you wait ? Why the assumption that a male doctor would make things any more painful than a female one ?

Ok so you’re really really bothered about men’s employment rights but women’s health, safety and mental wellbeing is not on your radar.

It’s ok, we hear you loud and clear.

Men don’t have the same issues with women caring for them as women do with men. It is not detrimental to their health or mental wellbeing. If they do decide it is an issue they can highlight it and I’m sure you will jump to it.

The NHS is not struggling to recruit because of a lack of available women. There may very well be structural barriers like childcare etc that make it easier for them to recruit men. That is not an argument for recruiting men into a limited number of specialist women’s areas.

And male students (nursing, medical and otherwise) have to pass assessments on gynaecological topics.
There are groups of women at medical schools who will work training male students in gynae procedures.

I think if you care about equality you should understand it works both ways. It’s perfectly possible to care about more than one thing.

You have been around long enough to have heard of the Single Sex Exceptions.

Where it is a proportionate means (some men not having what may be their dream job) to a legitimate aim (ie ensuring that more women take up proper screening/treatment and are less like to die)

It seems like some are only bothered about equality legislation when it benefits men.

Right, so you understand that mammograms are crucial. And you also now know that at least 30% of women will not attend, if a mammographer could be male. I'm sure you can understand why women might avoid a male mammographer, especially if they don't have any cancer symptoms.

So what do you think the solution is?

That’s complete nonsense. You appear to only be bothered about it when it benefits women.

Trying reading what she actually said and having just a little bit of empathy. She didn’t say that she thought a man would make it more painful, she said she couldn’t tolerate a man doing it. There are many reasons why this may be the case.

You may not have boundaries of privacy around men and that’s fine, but many of us do.

If you want to prioritise men taking jobs where they know a sizeable proportion of patients will traumatised or upset by their presence over women self-excluding from screening or treatment and the inevitable consequences of that, it says a lot about your view of ‘equality’.

What you’re advocating for is archaic.

People have campaigned for equality in employment for years. Let’s not unravel it.

Particularly at a time when the NHS is suffering capacity constraints leading to extensive waiting time.

Agree, also there may well be last minute staff unavailabilities etc, so unworkable.

I think its v unreasonable to expect hospital etc to ask every patient, but totally reasonable for you to make your concerns known and look for only female staff in the situation when booking. You still may not get it due to unavoidtladt minute issues and then I guess you decide to go ahead or wait longer.

There is equality. Both sexes get treated by both sexes and all jobs are open to both sexes.

You seem to be missing the point though.

You have the benefit of hindsight and in the scheme of things now think it was worth any potential upset or risk of having a male practitioner. That is obviously your prerogative.

You are clearly trying to make a point that you are very passionate about due to your suffering but it is coming across as a but reserved dismissive of the feelings and experiences of other women.

The main point here is that women should not be out in the situation where they have to accept seeing a male HCP for extremely unpleasant and intimate screening or treatment or risky dying of cancer.

Many women have significant trauma around men and find it impossible to be handled intimately by a man. Other women have religious requirements that exclude them from being seen by men and many just don’t want a very unpleasant situation in itself made worse by it being a man.

Every time a man is recruited for this type of job, there is going to be a proportion of women who suffer severe detriment. That is not on snd we should not be arguing to continue this.

The women who wave it away and effectively say ‘put up and shut up’ to the rest of us ensures that it will continue. If all women actually considered the wellbeing of other women for a change we could make it loud and clear that this has to stop and get it changed. The law already supports it.

Sadly, as we can see, that will never happen. There are always women keen to prove they are more accepting of the status quo (even if it leads to women suffering) than the rest of us.