Anyone want to FOI a hospital?

[nothingcomestonothing]

About their shiny new Chaperone Policy? It includes the following gems:

'Healthcare professionals should be sensitive to differing expectations with regard to race, culture, ethnicity, age, gender and sexual orientation, and wherever possible, the chaperone offered should be of the same gender the patient self-identifies as or that the patient requests.'

'To protect the patient from vulnerability and embarrassment, consideration should be given to offering a chaperone of the gender the patient self identifies as, wherever possible and this should be discussed directly with the patient and not assumed.'

I'd love to know how this is going to be applied in practice. I'd also love to see the equality impact assessment they have surely done. Unfortunately this is my employer though, and I can't risk it. If anyone would like the name of the hospital, please PM me.

Off to check out trusts policy

According to a noticeboard in a local health facility, my trusts policy, just a couple of weeks back, said that, women attending for smears can ask for
a " female " chaperone or nurse to carry out the procedure, or they could bring a friend along for the purpose of chaperoning, and if wanted, both females could have their smears done at the same time so they can chaperone each other.
I was rather pleased to see the word " female " in use. :-)

How are they defining 'gender' there? Since sex has been left out from the list, can we assume they are wrongly equating sex with 'gender identity'? Anyone can identity as a woman but it doesn't mean they are a woman.

I can confirm (because I checked on the Trust intranet) that

Grr too quick!

I can confirm that the equality impact assessment proforma does indeed conflate the protected characteristics of sex and gender identity. So every policy in the Trust that gets an impact assessment will check the impact on 'gender' and not sex. And presumably find they impact is positive.

Sorry I know the PC is gender reassignment not identity, the impact assessment of course lists it incorrectly as gender identity.

Aren't there about 100 gender identities? How are they going to match them?

Is the new policy hurting anyone? Am I missing something? What specially would you want someone to ask in a FOI request?

As it is worded (to keep Stonewall happy probably), a woman could request a woman chaperone and be given a man who says he identifies as a woman. This would defeat the purpose of making said woman feel comfortable. The devil is in the detail with all these policies, as certain pressure groups have been deliberately trying to obfuscate and eliminate women's (and men's) sex-based rights, in the interest of promoting 'gender identity ideology'.

I'd like to know why they are being sensitive to various needs, but not sex. And why they've chosen to include gender, which is not a PC and has no definition, and exclude sex, which is a PC.

I'd also like to know how they will respond when a woman asks for a woman,as in a biological woman not a person of either sex with a 'woman' gender.

Sex matters. Women matter. And a hospital should acknowledge it

'...wherever possible, the chaperone offered should be of the same gender the patient self-identifies as or that the patient requests.'
You could argue that 'that the patient requests' means the patient can request someone of the same sex? But they should just make it clear and simple in the first place and stop obfuscating. It is also ridiculous to not use the correct categories from the legislation for the protected characteristics.

They seem to have over complicated the statement a bit I guess. Discussion with patient about any preferences for the chaperone would have covered it. Still not sure what a FOI would be asking for though. Maybe if you work there you could approach whichever department it is who words the statements and suggest the addition of sex given that it is a protected characteristic?

They haven't done this by accident. The Trust is a Stonewall champion, with a powerful LGBTQ+ group (but no women's group obvs). Their trans policy for staff allows males to use the female changing rooms as soon as they say the magic words socially transition. When I questioned the single sex accommodation policy, which allows males to self ID into female bays, they called me a TERF in writing in their response. It's not safe for me to question this policy, I need my job.

A female patient asking for a female chaperone can get a male who identifies as a woman under this policy. And if they object the official Trust policy is for the staff to have to gaslight them and say that it is a woman. Or risk a disciplinary and being reported to the police for a hate crime. They haven't accidentally forgotten to use sex, they are captured.

The hospital trust sounds toxic from this description and you genuinely have my sympathies. I am pretty sure from what you describe an FOI about any aspect of this would not achieve anything if they are so entrenched.
From my perspective the whole debate around gender / sex has turned toxic (on both sides) and we are now left with awful situations like in your workplace. I really have no idea where we will end up as there seems to be no opportunity anywhere to have reasoned debate about what is a very complicated area for discussion.

The point of an FOI is to make them put their stance in writing - because they have to reply - to create a paper trail. So either they have to grit their teeth and say 'oh yes our mistake we meant sex as per Equality Act' and change their policy to reflect the actual law rather than Stonewall law. Which would be great.

Or, they double down and put in writing that they have decided to prioritise Stonewall points over fairness, women's safety and dignity, and the Public Sector Equality Duty, and will be sticking to their nonsense policy. And then when all of this gender identity house of cards comes tumbling down, as for my own sanity I have to believe it will, they can't reverse ferret, because they've defended their policy in writing despite the pitfalls of it having been pointed out to them.

Its not about trying to change their minds at this point, they're captured. It's about holding them to account for what they are choosing to do, by making a paper trail to show that they are knowingly breaching their legal duties.

Another perhaps more likely consequence is that any man who likes can ask for a female chaperone by stating that he is a woman so needs a woman to chaperone him

Statistically there are likely to be a lot more men asking for female medical staff to watch them undress than there will be male medical staff chaperoning female patients I'd have thought? Certainly once men get wind of what this means it is an open invite to demand a woman to be in close proximity to you while baked, which a lot of men will enjoy

Yep, plenty of room for staff to be used for validation and to be forced to witness/be part of a patient's...enjoyment in 'the chaperone offered should be of the same gender the patient self-identifies as or that the patient requests.' Whether that's male bodied staff who chaperone vulnerable female patients who request a woman, or female bodied staff chaperoning male bodied patients who request a woman. No thought at all for the staff being used. I believe J Yaniv went through a phase of calling ambulances/fire service to rescue him because he was allegedly stuck in the bath. Naked. A lot. Same kind of deal here.

Given that even these days most nurses are female and there is the usual male-female physical imbalance, is it not normal for male patients to be attended to by females without it being much of an issue for the men?
The issue arises more where because of the potential for rape (or for staff being accused of rape/assault), a woman might feel uncomfortable being say outnumbered and being treated by two men. In practice though if one nurse is female, this shouldn't arise.
The chaperone thing is also to protect medical staff from false accusations and there the male doctor is probably much more vulnerable than a female one.

There will still be the validation issues you mention but in practice most men would likely not want other men involved most of the time, I would have thought.

There will still be the validation issues you mention but in practice most men would likely not want other men involved most of the time, I would have thought.

Yes that is one of my concerns, that some male bodied people will specifically request a female chaperone because they get their kicks by feeling they can compel women to observe their bodies, or compel women to take part in their idea of themself as a woman. The female staff wouldn't have a choice if a male requests a female chaperone.

Previous to this I think the assumption has been that patients prefer a chaperone of their own sex. Now this policy allows males to specifically request a female chaperone, with no thought for why a male bodied person might want that. Or how it might be for the female staff to be compelled to be a part of a patient's fantasy.

And what about a transman who requests a male chaperone? I can imagine a male HPC doing the examination and male HPC chaperoning a female bodied transman could feel pretty vulnerable to accusations of inappropriateness, and if course a transman in that situation could be vulnerable to assault too. This is why dealing in sex and not gender matters.

Can a woman specify tht she would like to have a cis woman as chaperone ? Or should I be using the word female ? And would this result in their having as asterisk by their name as being trans -phobic?would it be seen as a hate crime ?

Have you filled in the NHS staff survey? I put in my concerns around conflation of sex and gender in policies with incorrect PC listed and that I didn't feel safe not to be discriminated against for holding legally protected GC beliefs

Sorry can't help with FOI but agree with getting info out there in writing as can then be shared with MPs etc to demonstrate concerns

Please don't use cis, it's offensive.

No, a woman can't specify an actual woman under this policy, that's the problem. Any terminology you can think of has been twisted to make the words for women include some men. This may not be an issue for you as (as far as I know) this policy is specific to the hospital I work in, there may be a better one at your local hospital. Or there may be a worse one. If you're worried, ask for it.

There are no asterisks by names in the patient records at my work, though the transgender care policy states that patients who object to sharing a room with a person of the opposite sex who believes they are the same sex should not be listened to, any more than patients who object to their room mates on racist grounds. And that staff who disclose (like it's not almost always bleeding obvious) a patient's trans status risks disciplinary proceedings and reporting to the police for a hate crime.

So yeah, short answer - if you ask for an actual natal woman you might be told you're a hateful bigot, ask your local hospital for their policy.

Yep at any opportunity I wax lyrical about sex and gender, but since the survey asks for your gender I don't hold out much hope mine won't be binned for knowing reality bigotry.