Neonatal infant physical examination

[EGAnderson]

As part of my job I examine newborn babies as part of their routine screening examination.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/newborn-physical-exam/

And here www.gov.uk/government/collections/newborn-and-infant-physical-examination-clinical-guidance

All results are uploaded to a national spine , certainly in England at least.
Guess what this records?
Gender
You can be male, female, unsure or prefer not to say
Any mention of Sex on the form... of course not. Within 48hours of life we have already ignored Sex.

Just start ticking ‘unsure’ on every form and if you get pulled up on it you can say the babies are pre-verbal and you didn’t want to assume their gender or misgender them, particularly because it could be another 15-18+ years before they have arrived at a settled view.

Is this new?

Not sure Red

Don’t think it is new, the last updated guidance was from 2015 so I would have thought at least since then

I discovered recently, for something as important as blood transfusion the NHS asks a persons gender not sex

Updated 2016, sorry

@dontforgetbilly that's frightening, that could kill someone!

Hmm. That could be tricky dontforgetBilly
At my annual blood transfusion updating recently it was explained that policy on universal donor/recipient had changed. There is a shortage of O neg blood which has always been the group of choice in an emergency where there isn't time for grouping and cross matching. O neg is the universal donor.
Now it has been agreed that O pos can safely be used except for women of childbearing age because of the risk of causing rhesus sensitisation. To be on the safe side, my hospital has decreed to exclude all women rather than have to rely on guesstimating age in an emergency situation.
Many trans men pass quite well, so they could potentially be given O pos blood, storing up future problems should they wish to have a baby in the future.