Women labelled ‘patients of childbearing potential’ on private London hospital form

[AngeloMysterioso]

Telegraph article about the Cromwell Hospital in London and their utterly ridiculous “de-gendered” patient info forms which refer to women as “patients of childbearing potential”.

Which rules out infertile women and post-menopausal women- who are all still women.

I suppose we should be grateful the form still refers to nursing mother and doesn’t say something equally ridiculous like feeding parent…

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/09/women-labelled-childbearing-potential-cromwell-hospital/

HCP who might be rushing/overworked/thinking about what’s for tea/wearing the wrong glasses and hence misreading the form etc etc

And if an HCP is assessing me I'd like their attention to be on that - not their next tea and bikkie break. A form that can be misread is a badly designed form.

Bit amused at the assumption that patients where English is a second language will know certain words but not others, but it’s always the words that conveniently advance that poster’s argument.

If a medical professional asked my elderly father if he might be pregnant it would destroy any confidence in their medical knowledge/abilities!

To me that just means women/girls who are menstruating and haven't gone through menopause or don't have any known infertility/hysterectomies etc.

Seems a pretty concise way to say it tbh. Stop looking for things to be irked by 🙄

It would be clearer to say women of childbearing age. It's just another way of erasing the word "women". The thin end of the wedge.

Stop looking for things to be irked by

Stop telling people what they can and can't be irked by.

LOL !! Ejaculator in charge. This made me laugh

This has nothing to do with the NHS. It's a private hospital that caters mostly to rich foreigners.

It's a question the NHS asks as well.

I do have some sympathy with hospitals on this. They are trying to ensure that no fetuses are exposed to radiation. To do this, they need everyone who might be pregnant to answer the question.

Of course, only women can be pregnant, but the fact is that trans-identifying people of both sexes have come to harm because they answered medical questions as their adopted gender, not their actual sex. We might think that is nuts but it has happened. A hospital that ignores that risk and ends up irradiating an unborn baby is going to be open to criticism and, potentially, litigation. (The risk to a baby from a single x-ray is actually pretty miniscule (fun fact: x-rays used to be used routinely to assess intrauterine growth) but CTs or repeated x-rays, as used in some surgery, are much higher risk.)

So I understand why hospitals are trying to phrase this question in a way that includes all women, including those who identify as men. I think the Cromwell has made a reasonable stab at this, except that they should have said "women and anyone else of childbearing potential".

They do ask very obvious questions because of vanishing small reasons they might have “guessed wrong”. For example I have a disabled child and we are often asked if we are related, when we are very obviously not and from different sides of the world.

I just called DH a 'person of ejaculating potential' and he is upset with me. Not fair.

Yeah it never works both ways. Always women being told to move over and "be kind". I think we should all refer to men as ejaculators or sperminators from now on.

Yep

Ridiculous this needs to stop

Blessed be the fruit

The first question here (let alone the title)is problematic.

Could you be pregnant?

I'm not sure transmen would always answer that accurately.

I've dealt with a complaint where one of my colleagues asked a trans teenager (female to male) to carry out a pregnancy test (our hospital policy is to pregnancy test all woman > 12 years). The teenager and family were upset as they felt we weren't recognising their gender choice.

As a result I've done a lot of reading around this and found out some fun things... I also presented the case at a whole hospital meeting to try to give colleagues vocabulary to explain why we need to pregnancy test female to male trans people for pregnancy to them sensitively.

Transmen (boys) have a disproportionately high rate of teenage pregnancy in a US data set. There are lots of potential reasons why this might be the case

1. self delusion - men don't get pregnant
2. barriers to accessing contraception - you've just spent time arguing with your parents/ HCPs to be thought of as a man so it's difficult to then go in and say "actually I need to go on the pill"
3. HCPs not recognising that transmen still have PIV sex (my colleagues - all doctors - certainly didn't- it made for an interesting morbidity and mortality meeting) therefore not realising that they should be offering contraception to this group.

Which rules out infertile women and post-menopausal women- who are all still women.

That's the point! It causes so much upset when you ask infertile women this question

This should definitely be headed "females".
I'm sure some women, or particularly teenagers, may think they aren't of childbearing potential because of contraception and then there's a risk of missing a pregnancy caused by contraception failure.

Well actually stop assuming everyone is like you.

I have two health conditions that come with some pretty severe brain fog which isn't anywhere near an adequate description of how it can affect your cognitive ability. I am FOREVER repeating things people tell me back to them because on bad days any ambiguous language can make it difficult for me to understand what you mean.

So even reading that phrase here. I first interpret as: potentially could be pregnant? No I can't be. I am not having sex.

Next.

Idk I think it works quite well. Remember women don't all have the ability to get pregnant. Asking an infertile woman her last period or someone who's had a hysterectomy is pretty pointless.

'Childbearing potential'

My grandmother had a very early menopause. At exactly the same age as her mum, my mum's periods petered out, so she went to see her gynaecologist. To dm's utter astonishment, she was pregnant.

Before that appointment, has my mum been seen a question addressed to 'Patients of childbearing potential', she would have skipped it as she considered herself to be menopausal.

Had the question been addressed to 'Females age 10-60' she would at least have had to give it pause for thought, and probably chosen Not Sure.

Language matters.

*t's no different to calling women 'breeders', 'cervix-owners' or 'uterus-havers'.

These terms refer to women as body parts. They are insulting

Perhaps we should start calling anyone possessing a penis ‘Dick’ or ‘Cock’?

I’m not a ‘woman of child bearing potential’ and haven’t been so for 36 years having had a hysterectomy when I was 33.
It would be interesting to know if that means I should identify as a male in this instance?

Brilliant! Good idea!
I’m just glad I’m older and don’t have to engage with a lot of this misogynistic crap, if that makes me a TERF or whatever then so be it.