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?

The law applies to male and female spaces which includes toilets. Male and female.

The person who carried out my colonoscopy was right in front of me the entire time.

He rammed it up there like he was stuffing a turkey too😅

No finesse whatsoever.

Statistically doesn’t mean inevitably

Nobody said that. Statistics are generated from actual cases though which show that statistically a woman is at far higher risk of sexual assault with a male practitioner than a woman. Which means your proposed NHS ‘education’ of women that they are ‘in safe hands’ is incorrect. If we could guarantee that all men intending to commit a sexual offence fess up about their intentions BEFORE acting and we could filter them out, then you could feasibly be correct (although doesn’t account for opportunists which vent of them are) but you’re not.

or that you’re given the best possible chance of a favourable outcome after the diagnosis of a life threatening condition

In order to do that a woman you would need to give her a female surgeon. As I linked upthread, research show that female patients with male surgeons are 32% more likely to die post surgery. They can’t yet work out why.

Several posters quoting the Equality Act here, but it’s my understanding that an exemption wouldn’t apply in this area

Why not? It’s a proportionate means (making a small restriction on the number of jobs available to men) to a legitimate aim (improving healthcare access, outcomes, mental wellbeing for women and ultimately saving women’s lives).

All they need to do is advertise the jobs as female only and invoke the Occupational Requirement exception found in Schedule 9, Part 1 of the Equality Act 2010. Then they need to stop discouraging female staff at high level and deal with the widespread sexism and harassment that is too common across the NHS.

If any man feels strongly that that recruitment is unlawful, they can sue and get it confirmed either way. As a man though you’d have to be pretty determined to access women’s intimate areas (against their will in many cases) in order to do that. Many decent men would understand the sensitivity of the issue for many women and not go there.

How did that work? Did you get sedation and think the person in front of you was the person performing the procedure rather than the person monitoring your stats?

That’s what it boils down to!

Wave away the known risks and coerce women into something that causes them distress or worse.

Brilliant!!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Really? I was lying on my side and the doctor was behind me. To be honest it seemed the logical arrangement, gave easy access to the relevant area. Were you lying on your back?

You have to do a colonoscopy from the rear . There may have been another person there too in front you. Are you sure it wasn’t a gastroscopy ?

I don’t know where you get 32% from. There’s a slight disparity in favour of women in terms of complications but it’s tiny, there’s no disparity at all in fatality.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/30/female-surgeons-patient-outcomes-better-studies

Women who study medicine have equal opportunity to become surgeons. Few choose that path because it’s not family friendly and in the case of orthopaedics few women have the physical strength needed. There’s a much higher percentage of female surgeons in paediatrics, interestingly.

Mine was great fun, apparently there was an inconvenient twist in my bowel and I ended up with a nurse and a junior doctor trying to manipulate it so the probe could progress. They were pressing on my abdomen it was weird but seemed to do the job.

I think I know which end of my body the tube went in! The person doing it was at my feet on my left, I could see her at all times.

Having googled, possibly this?

"Women are 15% more liable to suffer a bad outcome, and 32% more likely to die, when a man rather than a woman carries out the surgery, according to a study of 1.3 million patients."

I think you are quoting the wrong person. Mine was definitely from the rear, I even said them being behind me meant I felt more vulnerable.

For instance, a pp upthread had investigations regarding her bladder, and had a male HCP sit and stare at her very blatantly while she had to urinate, when the female HCPs gave her privacy. He made her feel very uncomfortable, and honestly, it sounds sexually motivated if the female HCPs didn't do it.

Oh gosh that sounds awful!! Trouble is we know some men have a huge fetish around women urinating (and many other female bodily functions but we’ll focus just the one for now) - as I understand there is an entire genre on porn websites for that very fetish - and many instances of men setting up hidden cameras in unisex toilets to film unknowing women.

In above scenario, how does that female patient know that he is not one of those men who is watching her with the purposes of his masturbation later? Can we get him to sign a waiver or something to promise faithfully that he is not watching for sexualised purposes? It clearly wasn’t necessary for the procedure.

So that patient was most likely being perved on with lots of plausible deniability (I mentioned that earlier and sometimes it is part of the power trip). I think the crime is called voyeurism but she’ll never be able to prove it because he will argue that it was his job.

Oooh, I read that patients whose surgeons are women have much better outcomes that those of male surgeons - I'll look for the data.

Link? Should be easy if you’ve just googled it.

I provided the link in my comment. I haven't read it yet, but it had the 32% figure, so I figure that's probably it!

Apologies. You’ve already done it.

Looking into it, it looks at a glance as though female surgeons always have more favourable outcomes across every surgical procedure, by up to several percent.

"For example, while 20.2% of women who had cardiothoracic (chest) surgery by a male surgeon suffered some form of adverse reaction, a lower percentage – 18% – did so if their surgeon was female. The same pattern was seen in general surgery, brain surgery and orthopaedic surgery."

Across the board, the difference adds up to 32%, I think is the way they're figuring it? Which is a bit clickbaity. But still, if they're consistently better - even by a few percent - I'd prefer them!

Yes. I linked to it upthread but @Blossomtoes must have accidentally mixed it. It being inconvenient information and all that.

Hilarious that he or she landed on a Guardian article though, that famous bastion of anti woman journalism.

And with the claims that there are more female surgeons in paediatrics conveniently skipping over that overall there are only 17% female surgeons for reasons I described earlier.

That 32%, while statistally significant (given the sample size) is a rise from 1.0% to 1.4%
There have been suggestions that reasons involve chiefly post-operative care, but also pre-op communication around the surgery.
I'm not arguing against statistical significance, but pointing out that it isn't a total mystery (and I'm agreeing that it's an issue that needs investigaton and action.
I'm just trying to show that it isn't 'careless surgery because it's a female patient'
And it isn't that 32% of women die (which I read on a health forum elsewhere).

@OtterlyAstounding’s link is from The Guardian too. Funny how it’s anti woman in my posts and pro woman in hers. Or, as you prefer - hilarious.

As I linked previously.

Major research, including a landmark study published in JAMA Surgery, indicates that female patients treated by male surgeons face a (32%) higher risk of death, a (16%) higher risk of complications, and an (11%) higher likelihood of hospital readmission compared to female patients treated by female surgeons.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2808894

Just grim as hell isn't it. Don't get me started on the Plenvu, I came across a meme about it being like Dumbledore being force fed Horcrux water, hilarious and accurate.