I’ve just been denied medical management of a failed abortion

[Tinyteatime]

I had a medical termination last Saturday, 7 weeks pregnant after my coil failed. Thought it had passed relatively easily so came away on a short holiday with my family luckily only 1.5 hours away from home. Started heavy bleeding and bad cramps yesterday, came to a&e as as advised by the BPAS clinic as I was flooding a pad and blood leaking through my trousers. Passed some very large clots. Internal scan reveals what they think is a foetal heart beat still in there. I’ve been in hospital one night and they said they would do the surgery on me this morning. I’ve just been told that all the doctors available won’t perform the procedure due to religion. This in the U.K. in 2019, in a hospital that offers abortion services. They’ve said I can stay another night and have it tomorrow, I have a breastfed baby that I’ve already been away from for one night, I’m in pain, bleeding and I’ve already had sepsis last year from a womb infection whilst giving birth so I’ve raised infection risk as a concern. I feel so angry about this. Would they deny women treatment for miscarriage? Or is it because there may still be a foetal heartbeat present? Is it simply because I’ve chosen to end the pregnancy myself? How in an nhs hospital can women be denied healthcare like this?

Iv read the whole thread thanks @JessicaWakefieldSV .

IfOnlyOurEyesSawSouls then you are either not very bright or are ignoring exactly what happened and why it should have been attended too sooner.

anyone who thinks it is fitting to come on this thread, in any guise, and use it as a platform to air an irrelevant belief system is being an abusive arsehole

Hope im never in your hospital Drin-despcable

Id challenge those with thoughts along these lines (and there are many in this thread) to find me a doctor who would see a woman come to HARM (not inconvenience, not the service they want when they want it, but actual harm) due to anything related to a termination due to a doctors objection to participating in terminations.

False and utterly bollocks argument. The avoidance of harm shouldn’t be the imperative. ‘We are willing to put you through hell, and increase your risk, but as long we’re not actively trying to harm your physical health (we don’t give a shit about your mental health) then it’s fine and dandy.’

The test of reasonableness is ‘is this patient receiving the same standard of care (including timeliness) for the same symptoms as they would if they had not had a termination? Are they receiving the same standard of care as they would if their HCP had not refused to perform an entirely legal procedure?’

Anything short of that and you’re agreeing that women who have had, or are seeking, terminations deserve to be treated less well by the healthcare system as other women. Which makes you a shit human being.

Hotter..retained products can be life threatening!

Glad you've finally had the treatment you should have had in the first instance, Tiny.

Hope you get somewhere with the complaints process, as this is absolutely disgraceful. It's clear to anyone with even half a brain reading this thread that you were scheduled for an op on the basis of medical need, and this op was then postponed not because your case had magically become less urgent, but solely because of the religious prejudices of some of the HCPs.

When you complain I’d suggest focusing on what you were first told would happen (operation) and why (heavy bleeding, risk of infection) and how your management plan changed as a consequence of this being a termination complication.

My understanding of treatment of retained products is that management can be expectant (antibiotics and wait for it to pass) or surgical. If you focus your complaint just on the delayed operation it’ll be easy for them to state that they’re still working within current guidelines by not operating that night.

Objection due to religious beliefs should have no role in influencing acute care.

Drs who moralise about not performing terminations if that’s their area of medicine make me angry. What do you think you’re achieving? The woman will still get a termination but you’ve just made it harder for them. So you think that women should be forced to continue with a pregnancy that they do not wish to have? How does that benefit anyone, including the unwanted child at the end of it?
Women should be the priority here and the OP was treated appallingly. Take care OP, I’m glad you finally got the treatment you needed.

@Tinyteatime sounds like you’ve been through the wars well and truly. Whatever the wider issues are this has obviously left you in more distress than you needed to be in. I suspect the hospital will have a case to answer at some stage. I hope you recover as fast as possible.

@drinthehouse

"At no point did the OP require emergency care and was denied this (as in she was dying and the doctors stood around and watched"

Holy shit? Is THIS how the NHS works then? Please god (in anyones religion) let none of us ever require emergency care if we have to be dying first...

FFS.

To all those slating doctors/nurses/nhs - you will miss it when its gone and youre needing to pay.

@JessicaWakefieldSV , no im not thick - im very well placed to understand the NHS & this situation.

However you , tend to make your point by being verbally hostile & swearing to people that dont agree .

There is absolutely a difference between needing intervention now that can't wait , & leaving people to die 🙄

To all those slating doctors/nurses/nhs - you will miss it when its gone and youre needing to pay.

Now that's whataboutery on the highest level. What's it to do with OP's case? No one's allowed to criticise anything because we'll miss it when it's gone?

JassyRadlett

Very well said

However you tend to make your point by being verbally hostile & swearing to people that don't agree

This is about being misogynistic and insensitive, not just disagreeing.

As an NHS service user, all of us are well placed to understand this, especially those of us who have had terminations. We are women, we don’t need anyone to come to a feminist board telling us we do not understand things. We clearly do. That you keep denying the facts of this case, the fact that the OP was refused care because doctors didn’t want to, rather than her not needing it, absolutely deserves hostility and calling out here. I tell you what offends me more than swearing, it’s outright blatant judgemental misogyny on a feminism board where a woman suffered distress and is here for support.

No one's allowed to criticise anything because we'll miss it when it's gone?

Yeah that’s a lame response and also completely nonsensical when you consider that feedback and campaigns for improved care are an important part of what has made the NHS what it is. That it needs improving shouldn’t be ignored or responded to with, oh well they’ll take it away altogether if you complain!! I already pay for healthcare, in my taxes, so I damn well will complain if women are being refused care because we allow them to opt out of legal procedures only for women. I pay for it. I also have to pay privately for hormone problems because the NHS is hopeless with those, and i’ll keep complaining about that too!

@IfOnlyOurEyesSawSouls but we do pay for healthcare today, it's fully funded by us, you know this as you claim to be well positioned to know how the NHS works.

And it needs an overhaul. This is one small acute example of why our health service is falling short of being fit for purpose.

That's not a criticism of staff who try their best with what they have. These folk didn't really do that though did they. Drs on duty, being paid by us, who refused to undertake the task required which includes providing a duty of care to the patient as the priority.

It's broken.

Anyone denying that has got their head truly in the sand. Or up Jeremy Hunts backside in a ridiculously well paid Advisory role.

I understand the argument that if doctors are uncomfortable with any aspect of treatment they shouldn’t go into it and I’d like to agree with it. However what do we do if it turns out the demand of this medical skills set far outstrips supply?

We look again at the situation if it happens ... however from experience, I simply don't believe it will

As said already, I've had years of recruiting HCPs and am only too well aware of just how fast "objections" can vanish if there's a consequence to the HCP themselves, as opposed to their patients

This really shouldn't need repeating, but I'll repeat it anyway: religion is a choice and unforeseen medical problems are not

Is it cognitive dissonance to feel that abortion should be legal ie women should be allowed to seek consenting medical practitioners to perform the procedure, but on the other hand feel deeply uncomfortable forcing doctors to comply with something that is incompatible with their own ethical understanding?

I’m really flip flopping on this issue, so I appreciate my thoughts are incoherent atm, and no disrespect to the op as again I hope she and her family are ok. I do think it’s a discussion we should be looking at as a society.

I think sue that one doctor for malpractice on a no win no fee basis. The lawyers can then do all the legwork. I would be interested to see whether that ultrasound was medically necessary for you or if you were subjected to it purely so he could get out of treating you.

I wouldn't try to force anyone to carry out an abortion and if the nhs did I'd imagine there'd be an even bigger difficulty r recruiting and retaining than there is currently.

Again in the OPs case she wasn’t having an abortion, according to the professional who actually ended up treating her. However that is also clearly not the view of those who refused, at the time they refused so I guess the situation definitely requires looking at.

I know, dervel, hence the malpractice case. He seems to have lied in order to block treatment and may have caused op to undergo unnecessary medical procedures. Wholly unacceptable.

My second comment was addressing the wider 'should we be able to force doctors to carry out abortions?' question you posted about.

" but what about cases of retained product? If a pregnancy is clearly unviable, even if they might detect a heartbeat (which still remains unclear in my case) surely this should still be treated as a case of retained product which is an infection risk?"

Tbh I think that having been booked in for and had an abortion-any follow up needed should not be thought of as an abortion at all.

Tbh I think that having been booked in for and had an abortion-any follow up needed should not be thought of as an abortion at all

That's really the issue. Dr A didn't do his or her job properly. Dr B was being asked to sort what Dr A messed up.