Requesting a female doctor

[anjiat]

Hi!

I requested to see a female doctor, and was told I don't have a right to request the sex of my doctor?

I have a history of sexual abuse and don't feel comfortable with having an appointment with a male doctor.

I thought I had a right to request a doctor of my preferred sex?

Is this right?

Thanks in advance!

of course you can request this but how do you feel about possibly having to wait if no female doctor is available, would you feel comfortable with a male doctor if there was a female nurse present. It all depends of how you feel and how important the appointment is and how personal the examination will be. Who told you you don't have the right to request a same sex doctor?

From www.nhs.uk (which you could have checked for yourself):

"Most GP surgeries and health centres have male and female GPs. However, a small number of doctors work on their own. If your GP surgery does have both male and female GPs, they will try their best to meet your request. However, this may not always be possible, or you may have to wait longer to see a specific GP"

Was this at your GP surgery or a hospital? Did you request in advance, or when you got there?

Is this at your GP surgery or a hospital department?

If this was my GP practice, I'd contact the practice manager. If it was the hospital, I'd contact PALS.

Some women really don't have a choice about needing to see a female doctor. However, you will be chaperoned if there really are only male doctors - although It would seem a somewhat unusual scenario for only male doctors to be working in a whole practice or dept.

www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/nhs-services-and-treatments/can-i-choose-to-see-a-male-or-female-gp/

You absolutely do have the right to request, and to be assigned, a female doctor.

Please consider posting this question in ‘feminism chat’ as well - you will get lots of advice from women who know your legislative rights, and advice on how to word your requests so that people know that you mean business.

Don’t let anyone deny your protected rights to safety, privacy and dignity.

Yes you can absolutely ask to see a female doctor. It’s not always possible, particularly if it’s an emergency and you need to see someone out of hours, but they should always try to honour your request.

Yes of course emergencies are different.

There are also certain situations in which your request cannot practically be met.

In those cases you have every right not to be seen by any doctor in that practice. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do.

When you register with a gp practice you can look up their website to see what doctors work there and their specialities. If there are no female doctors working in that group would you then have to find another practice, some only employ 1 doctor like one of our surgeries. Of course you can request this and they will honour your request, but if they cannot provide a female gp then would they have to give you the choice of either a female chaperone or going to another surgery. What else can they do?

petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/238019

This is crazy. You're just as likely to be abused by a woman as a man. Of course you can request this and I am sure that anyone would help if they could. I would think about some kind of counselling though as this must be very frightening for you to live with. I know that if I've ever been physically examined in a gps office I've been offered a chaperone. Maybe ask your practice if this is something they do?

NO. Do not lie. Absolutely no one is just as likely to be abused by a woman.

If you really genuinely think that, and weren’t just straight out lying about something that is demonstrably not true, you need to seriously educate yourself. It is a complete and utter falsehood. Look up the stats. And seriously, have a word with yourself.

Aside from which, OP’s abuser was clearly a male. That is of the major reasons why she does not want to be seen by a male doctor.

*one of the major reasons

You're just as likely to be abused by a woman as a man

Well that's not actually true, is it? Men commit 97% of sexual offences. This is not affected by gender identity or presentation.

I’m a doctor. I think you can! But there are times it may not be possible e.g. middle of night in A&E and on cal doctor for gynae is male. But I would try my utmost to make you comfortable and get you a female doctor. We want our patients to feel at ease.

Sometimes there just is no female doctor - more often a problem in surgical specialties. I’m a retired anaesthetist, who has previously helped to put together an entirely female theatre team (including a female Arabic translator, to explain the spinal anaesthetic and monitoring!) for a Muslim patient, but she had to accept a male urologist to perform the surgery as the hospital had no female ones.
Most GP practices (other than single handed ones, obviously) have at least one woman, but they tend to get heavily booked for gynae type consultations and there might be a longer wait to see them.

Hi all,

Thanks for your responses.

This isn't an emergency appointment. In fact I've been trying to get this appointment for months. I requested a female doctor then too. There are 2 female doctors there, but the receptionist is insisting I can't and has booked me in with a male doctor.

My history of sexual abuse is on my records, which is why I'm confused. Usually every time I go there is a female doctor or nurse.

For some reason, the receptionist is adamant that I can't request the sex of my doctor.

Ignore the receptionist and ask to speak to the practice manager or a nurse. You do not need to get the receptionist permission to speak to the manager or practice nurse. It might be worth emailing the practice manager who can make the appropriate appointment for you.

The receptionist clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I’d report her. Of course you can request a female!

I requested a female gyno (for internal examination) when 2 male doctors (1 was 4th year med student) were with me and they were happy to find me 1 and few mins after a female doctor came and gave a long lecture about ''I cannot request for a female doctor under NHS'' and told me all about equality, and gender fluidity, i can't pick doctors on gender, colour, race, religion and the fact that it may offend those male doctors. It made me very upset then, I was there already upset about loosing a child and she made me feel worse that I couldn't forget how she spoke to me as if I committed a crime.

I'm so sorry that happened to you @sidraM.
It doesn't seem right to me - NHS guidance says you can request a female doctor and they will try to provide one. Can you complain?

I don't know if I can complain or not, Not too sure on NHS guidelines. To me it doesn't seem right as in the past when I requested for female doc they were happy to provide one even though I had to wait for almost an hour but at least I felt comfortable during the examination. But this one just came and started talking real fast. I got scared so I didn't say much.

sidraM you can complain. Medicine is practiced by consent. Without consent the doctor or other HCP is committing an assault on the patient. Its why HCP frame action requests as questions rather than a demand. The female HCP behaviour was not professional as she is a position of power and you are vunrable.

OP if you know the names of the female doctors ring and ask for them by name. The names are usually on the pratice website.

Hi, thank you for helping out, I do know her first name but filing a complain wouldn't make any difference, as NHS is overwhelmed they may not take anything into consideration. I don't wanna cause any problems as I may need to go in again and she's permanent staff rather than locum so I might see her and besides I don't know the full procedure of filing a complain anyway and what if she find out it was me?

@Ninkanink

You absolutely do have the right to request, and to be assigned, a female doctor.

Please consider posting this question in ‘feminism chat’ as well - you will get lots of advice from women who know your legislative rights, and advice on how to word your requests so that people know that you mean business.

Don’t let anyone deny your protected rights to safety, privacy and dignity.

This is misinformation. You absolutely have the right to request a female doctor/HCP. However the NHS is not obliged to provide one, and there is no legislation or legislative right anywhere in UK law which states any such thing. There will be times when there is simply not a female doctor available, particularly if your request is time sensitive and/or requires a particular specialism. In order to always be able to assign a female doctor on request, clinics would basically have to always have one spare kicking around, and one for every specialty to boot. This is obviously not logistically possible.