[quote R0wantrees]BUPA should be very aware of the risks to patients if they confuse sex and gender/gender identity.
An individual's sex is observed and recorded at birth, it is often known before birth.
Anne Harper-Wright's article concerns the NHS but it is to be expected that BUPA has same risk awareness and standards:
(extract)
"The NHS understands the clear distinction between sex and gender.
The NHS, in addition to treating patients by biological sex, are legally bound to respect a person’s ‘gender identity’ too, should they declare one. Biological sex remains immutable, and important. Medical treatment of the sexes differs between males and females. Male and female anatomy, genetics, reproductive organs, diseases, response to drugs are critically different. To overwrite a patient’s biological sex in a medical record with their gender identity would be dangerous. The NHS was so concerned about inadvertent confusion between the two concepts that it took careful action to ensure it could keep a record of both.
The NHS Sex and Gender Standards
In 2005, shortly after the Gender Recognition Act was made law, an NHS exercise was commenced to standardise patient information and data within the various IT systems across the NHS. Within this exercise a suite of documentation was created, dedicated to designing a system architecture that could attempt to cope with the challenges specific to using BOTH sex AND gender as data.
Because the consequences of an NHS mix up between sex and gender was recognised as dire. And this risk was noted in several NHS documents, produced by the Microsoft Health Common User Interface team. The following quotes link to the NHS documents for public viewing.
“The term ‘Gender’ is now considered too ambiguous to be desirable or safe”
“Users may confuse the terms current gender and sex, or assume that they are synonymous”
“It is therefore desirable to use the two distinct terms ‘Sex’ and ‘Current Gender’ “
“The Current Gender input controls are used to record the gender, according to how a patient currently describes themselves, whereas the Sex input controls records their phenotypic sex”
~NHS Sex and Current Gender Input and Display User Interface Design Guidance
The NHS went to a lot of trouble and expense designing a database to hold our medical records that wouldn’t mix up our sex with our ‘gender identity’ if we professed to have one. The NHS CANNOT ignore sex, even if the law says gender identity trumps it. And the design guidance is very clear: capture ‘gender feelings’ if you must, but the NHS categorically must record SEX separately, or people will get hurt. Do not overwrite physical reality with feelings on medical records.
The NHS is very clear when sex means sex, and when gender means something entirely different. They have an entire suite of published “Sex and Gender” Information Standards which makes the distinction between the two concepts crystal clear."
medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-1e8f4e6363a6[/quote]
That link is to some GC propaganda.
The NHS view is this.
If a patient requests administrative changes to their medical records, this should be actioned from the date of the patient’s request. For example, if a patient requests their name and gender to be changed on their records, any reference to their previous name and gender should be removed and their new name and gender should be used going forward.
As doctors are required to keep accurate records, no clinical records created before the change of gender should be changed or deleted. However, patients may request to have factual errors in the records corrected and notes added to reflect their views.
Patients that request a new medical record may understandably be concerned about the confidentiality of their previous records under their old NHS number. Unless an alternative has been discussed and agreed with the patient, previous medical records should be filed with the CCG (or the BSC if in Wales). No reference to the old NHS number should be made on the new record.