Will smears be done by men/TWs in future?

[WeepyWillow]

I had a smear test this week. The female nurse asked whether I wanted a chaperone in the room with us.

Bemused, I asked what she was on about. New policy apparently. Previously, if a male medic is performing an intimate examination the (female?) patient is offered a chaperone. But now, For Equality, the offer is made to all irrespective of sexes involved.

Is this to pave the way for TWs doing smears? Will the offer of a chaperone be to cover the NHS back?

I know from breast examinations that a female is always in the room when a male doctor examines. They don't even ask you, the team of two will be in the room. For mammograms a female x-rayer is guaranteed. But what might that mean in future?

On the one hand I think, don't be so ridiculous Weepy, it'll never happen. But on the other...

At the moment I can ask to see a female GP, no problem. For most complaints the sex of the doctor is irrelevant but sometimes I feel more comfortable talking to a woman. Might I lose that option in future?

This!

I don’t see any issues regardless of gender. It’s another way of them covering their backs with complaints and law suits. I think it’s more to do with that than anyone’s gender

So women need to put aside their trauma to make your lives easier?!

I’m a survivor of CSA, I have PTSD, I will never accept a male performing intimate examinations etc. I’m terribly sorry if that makes you sad for men, or irritated at how inconvenient it is for you.

Ease up, she didn't say anything of the sort.

I think we all know how stretched the NHS is and we're all intelligent enough to know that if certain sexes of staff are requested it has the potential to create staffing issues. That doesn't mean women don't have the right to request female HCPs.

No, someone who works for the NHS, shouldn’t be talking about women as if their trauma is unimportant and irritating. It took me 2 years of therapy to even be able to allow a woman to give me a smear and then I read shit like this, as if me and women like me are just annoying drama queens and it’s so sad for the poor men.

I agree and sorry you are having to deal with this @Naunet

This phrase from mids2019 is particularly insensitive:

There have been situations I am aware of where women have been redirected from other duties to cover for men unecessarily.

What exactly does "unnecessarily" mean in this context? And who decides it's unnecessary?

I've no problem with a male gynaecologist and a female chaperone (it's in the spelling, too). The problem is a TW and whether a chaperone is then present since a TW is male. If TWAW then a chaperone may be deemed unnecessary. Asking everyone whether the person doing the smear is male or female seems like a possible route to using TWs - but I think the TW would insist that no chaperone is needed (because the presence of a chaperone would be invalidating of their TW status).

Sometimes it just isn’t possible to provide a female doctor if the hospital doesn’t have one in that particular specialty.
I remember a muslim patient who required a urology procedure, and asked for an all female team in theatre, plus a female interpreter, as she only spoke Arabic. We were able to provide an all female nursing staff, an Egyptian surgeon’s wife volunteered to translate, I handled the spinal anaesthetic myself, but we didn’t have a single female urologist anywhere in our area of 2,000 sq miles of rural Scotland. In the end, she agreed to our locum Greek chap, who kept a low profile behind the drapes at the end of the table and didn’t speak to her during the op.
I understood the patient’s distress - not only did she have religious objections to a male surgeon, but she had suffered FGM, which had caused her urinary problems and severe renal impairment as a result. We all did our best to support her in theatre, and our interpreter wrote out several useful phrases for her on the ward afterwards. She actually coped very well.

Personally I couldn’t care less who does it as long as they are professional. Once you get though a few rounds of IVF and just about everyone in a clinic has had a good look you stop caring.

Good, and for the women who do care, then women practitioners all the way

No personally I'd only want an actual woman for a smear or any pregnancy related thing or anything to do with my boobs or vagina!

Had a male midwife back in the 90's he was bloody awful thinking back.

Pervy weird doctor try to perform a cervix scrape thing for abnormal cells as well , horrific awful man. I complained and it was up held. Awful man

I'm broadly GC, but have never been at all bothered about a male doing a smear etc. The sex of the medical professional is completely irrelevant - they just need to be competent at their job.

I'm GC - I've had a male GP do one of my smears years ago, I had a male midwife at one stage during DC's birth (I was ask if I was OK with a man and said yes) had a C-section performed by a male surgeon and a male anesthesiologist plus male Dr's at various stages of infertility investigations & IUI/IVF procedures but I always consented to a man in those cases. I have in the past requested a female healthcare professional and I would be bloody furious if I requested a female and was given a TW. In most cases I'm happy to be treated by a man but I know that this is not the case for all women and on the occasions I have asked for a woman it has been because I wanted someone who had the experience of the vagaries of womb ownership rather than man who feels like a woman.

I don't wish to come across as insensitive but we have major gender inequality in nursing for example and if we win to have a 50/50 split in nursing gender then inevitably there will be more men working on wards and interacting with female patients. Is this a bad thing or should we not address gender inequality within some staff groups?

One thing I have noticed and I think this is from a historical perspective of the NH S is that when it comes to consultant then you get what your given in terms of gender as consultants are very busy people not great in number. There then seems to be some partial acceptance of gender selection from a HC P when it comes to other roles.

@Babdoc

I understand that situation and sometimes it is very difficult to engineer a staffing group of one gender when resources are extremely stretched. We have faced situations where patient safety may have been marginally impacts by the refusal of patients to be seen from a person from the opposite gender. I think there is an awareness of patient sensitivity but also of overall safety.

Are you talking about bio sex or gender...confused.

don't wish to come across as insensitive but we have major gender inequality in nursing for example and if we win to have a 50/50 split in nursing gender then inevitably there will be more men working on wards and interacting with female patients. Is this a bad thing or should we not address gender inequality within some staff groups?

Why would you be trying to have a 50/50 split between male and female nurses when you know that will make it far more difficult to fulfil the requirements for patients that need a female nurse (for whatever reason)?

What is the benefit to having a 50/50 split between the sexes? I remember we seeing that ages ago when I saw NHS bosses planning to try and increase the number of male nurses - why?

If men are naturally not that interested in the profession and most women don’t want a male nurse, why change things which will definitely it worse for female patients? Most men are happy with a female nurse, I see little push from that direction so why?

@RichardBannister

@RichardBarrister

Apologies I meant sex in this discussion.

We accept a 50/50 split in sex for medicine degrees and if we had a consultant obstetrician going for a job role we would not discriminate on sex grounds for that position. So for medicine the 50/50 split is natural and in fact it would be potentially illegal to discriminate on a protected characteristic i.e. sex.

a lot of NH S recruitment is name and sex blind on shortlisting and so you can expect applicants of both sexes getting through for a range of HCP positions and theoretically that would lead to a 50/50 split. However we as a society possibly accept a predominance of women in nursing but we would definitely not discourage men for applying so maybe this will change in future.

I think ultimately does sex of staff have to be a formal consideration when addressing the NHS work force and how could this be done without contravening employment law?

I am not unsympathetic to the views here but there is a lot to consider.
T

When I was last in hospital overnight I refused to have a male nurse give me a bedpan and that was fine, a woman came instead. I don't see why we have to have a 50/50 split on every job (and e.g. coal mining it is illegal for women to work underground in a mine - though not in an open cast mine, presumably). Men do not seem to object to female nurses, but some women object to male nurses for intimate care (and most do not object to male doctors as long as there is a woman present - which there always has been in my case, no TWs). That being so, and men not being particularly interested in nursing in large numbers, I doubt we need even a one-third/two-third split. Equality splits both ways where the job involves intimate care of any kind - the needs of the person receiving care are as important (possibly more important) than the needs of the carer in relation to sex of either. Also, some jobs, activities etc are restricted on a sex basis because sex and pregnancy are protected characteristics e.g. there are laws about how much a woman can carry etc - do we want these protections repealed? Repeal of this protective legislation was the position of radical feminists in the 70s although I could never understand why because these protections were to enable women to be in the workforce but bore in mind that women have needs that require different treatment from men - Kathleen Stock has a good article on this (re Maoist China) in her blog).

There then seems to be some partial acceptance of gender selection from a HC P when it comes to other roles.

Because there is a difference in roles? All the psychiatrists I've seen were men for example and ignoring the paternalism (all of them)/patting my knee and calling me beautiful (the last one), I could cope. They were there to discuss symptoms/medication not the root of my trauma. For all their faults, they had the empathy to organise female psychologists for that.

There is a massive difference between say psychiatrists and smears/childbirth. My current smear is overdue because they can't guarantee who will do it and after my experience detailed upthread in which a perfect nice male doctor delivered dc1, I daren't risk it.

I had a breast exam from a male consultant. His hands were freezing (I know female hcps also have cold hands but in my experience they apologise before sticking them on your naked bits), he checked the lump and said it was fine. Then without asking or saying anything, he stuck his cold hands on my other breast. When I jumped, he laughed and said it made sense to check them both. Obviously it did, but he could have handled it better. It's also the knee patting, hair stroking and other random physical contact I've had from doctors...that's all come from men. Minor little things which you'd never ask consent for because that would just highlight the absurdity of for example asking a labouring woman if you can stroke her hair. It's the little things which add up and make women uncomfortable. When I mentioned the hair stroking at debrief to the hospital, the senior midwife couldn't understand why any woman, not even one with a history like mine might have an issue with it. Perhaps things like that need dealing with before aiming to make nursing 50/50.

I was offered a chaperone when a Muslim female doctor (I had asked for a female doctor) did a breast check. Had the doctor been a transwomen I may well have refused the exam or, more likely because I am a wuss, insisted on a chaperone. I live in an area with a large Muslim demographic. I doubt they'd pull that shit on us

Slight sidebar - but I don't think having a chaperone automatically makes it fine. I had to have a coil removed by a male doctor, there was a chaperone there, and for some reason it just made me really uncomfortable. It wasn't because of fear he would do something inappropriate, it was just the fact that it was a man. I still think about it sometimes and my skin crawls, which I don't get when I think about my smears with female nurses.

It didn't help that he used stirrups which I'd never encountered before, it felt really undignified.

Just been to see a private male gynae today. Female nurse was automatically brought in as chaperone for examination without being asked.

A London GP has done exactly that and has been interviewed for several articles being very pleased with himself that his Muslim patients let him do more invasive procedures than before. Apparently he took time off to transition and then returned to the practice and apparently some of his patients assumed he was a female relative of his previous incarnation of a male GP.

They do it regardless of the sex or gender of the HCPs involved. Partly to protect the patient, but mostly to cover their backs in case of allegations. Everyone is very litigious nowadays.