Telegraph: Patients may be guilty of discrimination if they refuse care of transgender medic, NHS bosses told

[ResisterRex]

A report by the NHS confederation is in today's Telegraph. A good example of how a hierarchy of EDI seems to have been cultivated, with disabled people right at the bottom. Anyone who's had a parent or grandparent with dementia will be upset to read that parts of the NHS want to be able to refuse to provide care to their loved one because their comfort comes last.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/09/nhs-patients-discrimination-transgender-staff/

"Patients may be found guilty of discrimination if they refuse the care of a transgender medicc_, according to new NHS guidance.
Health bosses have been warned that patients have no right to be told a healthcare worker’s assigned sex at birth.
However, transgender health workers can choose not to treat patients if they feel uncomfortable doing so, the report by NHS Confederation says.
The report, published earlier this month in partnership with the LGBT Foundation, says patients can only request care from a same-sex staff memberr_ in limited circumstances, such as if they are having an intimate examination.
It states that when a patient requests an employee administering care to be a woman or a man, “the comfort of the staff member should be prioritised”.
Patients with dementia ‘should be challenged’

The report goes on to say that “the patient has no right to be told that the person treating them is trans or non-binary,” adding: “It would likely be discriminatory for the patient to refuse to be treated or cared for by a trans person, unless clear and evidenced clinical harm may result to the patient.”
Patients with dementia “should still be challenged” if they express discriminatory views about transgender staff, the 97-page guide states, while their relatives “may be removed from the premises” if they do the same.
But a non-binary medic can refuse to treat a patient, with the advice stating they “should not be forced to deliver care if this would cause undue distress or invalidate their lived experience of gender”.
It comes as the NHS published its first equality, diversion and inclusion (EDI) plan, which outlines that organisations are to include “diversity training on gender reassignment and sexual orientation” within mandatory training for healthcare workers."

More than “some” unfortunately. Have a look at the the Women’s Rights Network report on the level of assault women and girls have experienced in hospitals. It’s shocking.

(apologies am on my phone so difficult to link to the WRN report but a quick google should find it)

Yes true, it's all become so complicated regarding gender now. X

No criticism, I know what you mean, but the 'it's complicated' line is another parcel of nonsense you've been sold. It isn't.

It is not complicated at all to continue serving 99% of the population by sex as has always happened, and to provide additional to and different from services for the less than 1% who do not find sex based services tenable. Those services can be flexible for those who do not care about sex based services (yet, one can only hope the privilege of that happy position lasts them a lifetime), and for those who like the smell of liberal righteous martyr in the morning.

The 'complication' is that there is a small political lobby with very loud voices and sharp elbows that put middle class mums right into the shade, who are insistent that unless

1. all resources are permanently removed from women
2. no women are ever permitted to not be undressed in a place where a man can't be watching if he wants
3. inclusion, access and diversity for women is binned
4. so are the 8 other characteristics of the equality act
5. the resources they are handed are torn from the hands of women who must be visibly left with nothing at all, preferably really upset about it, ha! in the manner of a toddler who has just stamped on an ant

they will scream and scream until everyone is sick.

Is there a reason that medics within the NHS are not doing their job, why not all writings together about management having munchausens by proxy symptoms and making a mass report of their colleagues to the police, isn't fabricated induced illness a crime, why don't they do this? Why should it be covered up?

They make the rest of us a proxy, give them the correct attention in court and prison, instead of all this worship.

@IWillTakeOnTheNHS your post sounds deranged and full of hate.

It is fairly hateful towards women, I agree with you. It's a strong word, but yes, the tone and attitude towards women is pretty hateful through that document.

User613

So?

Your opinion has worth to you and others, you can express it.

I can understand why someone would not want my question to be posted.

Please repost with the typos and punctuation sorted out because I'm not sure what "why not all writings together about management having munchausens by proxy symptoms and making a mass report of their colleagues to the police" means.

No, read on, if you can't make disability adjustments.

I'm autistic. Unambiguous sentence structures are a disability adjustment that I need.

Do you think that I am joking about being autistic? What do I have to do, scan and upload my diagnostic report?

Sonia Sodha has written about this in the Observer (the Guardian's terfy sister) today

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/11/new-nhs-guidance-could-prevent-same-sex-care-for-women

A good article by Sonia Sodha which comprehensively outlines the issues.

She mentions that an EHRC spokesperson said:

“Accommodating service users’ requests for healthcare to be provided by a man or a woman, or by a person who is not trans, affects staff members who do not meet those requirements. This could in some circumstances result in claims of unlawful discrimination.
“Service providers can minimise this risk by having clear policies in place about when such requests will be met, ensuring that staff are aware of such policies and the reasons for them, and mitigating any possible negative impact on individual staff members.”
And this is what I was saying in a PP below - the NHS shouldn't be blaming patients if NHS managers are putting their trans staff in an untenable position by pretending that biological sex doesn't matter in situations when it actually does - there's nothing in law that allows the NHS to transfer its responsibility as an employer (to protect its staff from discrimination in the workplace) onto its service users. It should have policies and protocols to protect staff from abuse from patients (including actual transphobia, obviously), but it doesn't change the fact that it's the NHS will always be responsible for the protection and wellbeing of its employees and it can't wriggle out of that responsibility by pretending it's up to patients to perform the NHS's duty not to discriminate against employees by treating a transwoman as if they were a biological woman.

If the NHS places a trans staff member in a position where sex matters and then that trans person is discriminated against (e.g. not allowed to do the job the NHS hired then to do while their biological female colleagues are allowed to) because sex matters, then the trans staff member only has recourse to the NHS as their employer - they can't take a patient to an employment tribunal as the patient isn't their employer- they're just a service user making a perfectly reasonable request for a same sex practitioner in a situation where sex actually matters.

Trans men are in fact women.

See this mangling of language is really not helping.

Oh user, your still on the be kind schtick.

No we do not consent to any of this.

If the NHS goes this way, the NHS deserves to fail.

I'd prefer no healthcare at all (which as I have no money for insurance is what i will get) to this forced to accept whatever someone says or worse having to state why I need single sex HCPs

Frankly if this goes ahead, so many women will die itll be part of an investigation in 15 years.

Horrified to hear an EHRC employee would say such a thing!

ArabeIIaScott sorry if it's not clear from my post, but my point was that my interpretation of what the EHRC spokesperson said (which may be clearer in the wider context of their quote from the article as I didn't quote their whole background spiel, for the sake of brevity) was that it's on the employer (the NHS in this case) to manage the expectations of the trans employee and to explain to them why they won't always be able to be treated according to their gender identity and will sometimes have to be deployed in work in accordance with their biological sex and not their inner sense of gender.

I read it that the EHRC agrees that it's the NHS, not the patient, who will potentially be subjecting that trans employee to discrimination if it has failed to implement policies and procedures and staff training that protects staff from being put in the position where they expect to be treated like they are a biological woman when the law around patients' rights says otherwise.

just explicitly state biologically female

Or y'know words can go back to their original meaning and asking for a female HCP will gain you an actual ahf.

In health even disregarding trans people you can't guarantee a health professional of a particular sex will be there especially in an emergency. In our GP surgery most GPs are female but on a particular afternoon there may be only male or only female GPs available. Also we have a male patient who often asks for a "young pretty lady doctor" Also at many nursing homes there may be just 1 nurse on duty and the other staff care assistants and that nurse may be male. I'm in favour of unambiguous language about sex as opposed to gender identity but the NHS and social care aren't overflowing with spare people of both sexes who can fulfil all requests

That may be true.
That doesn't mean patients should be lied to and told they are being treated by a female when they aren't.
Patients can choose not to be treated if they want.

I agree

That sounds a highly unlikely situation given the proportion of the nursing and social care workforce that are female, as well as the larger number of women in nursing homes and older adult residential care. If such a nursing home ended up with only male staff on duty for a particular shift there is something seriously wrong with their shift system (and possibly something weird about their recruitment policies) if they accommodate female as well as male service users or residents. It's more often the problem that we can't always ensure that there is a male members of staff available for any men who would prefer care from a person of the same sex.

Most care assistants in care homes are female but there is usually only 1 nurse on duty at a time and at one of our care homes that nurse is male 1/3 of the time.