There was a discussion on a local Facebook group about who could attend a pharmacy for antibiotics for a UTI without having to see the GP.
There were a lot of anecdotal stories about who had been seen before but lots of confusion so someone linked to the actual NHS paperwork showing the inclusion/ exclusion criteria and I was pretty shocked by some of the language:
Non pregnant cisgender women, non-binary people assigned
female at birth, transgender men (with no structural alteration to
their urethra)
• Individuals aged 16 years to 64 y
Individuals aged 15 years or under or 65 years of age and over
• Cisgender men, non-binary people assigned male at birth,
transgender women (including those who have had structural
alteration to their urethra)
I get that the clarifications about urethral surgical alterations may be useful and necessary (what a tangled web we weave) but I really feel uncomfortable about the use of 'cisgender' as an objective term for decision making around the supply of medicines. Surely this is somewhere where the term 'biological female' is really appropriate? Or even the 'female sex at birth' terms?
Does the use of these (I think contested and to me at least, offensive) terms in an NHS document mean that all pharmacy staff participating in this scheme have had training which explains these terms to them? Not sure if there's a training document somewhere that defines what their understanding of cisgender is? Is that now a universally accepted and settled term?
These documents are dated from the beginning of this month, so any hope this stuff was fading seems misplaced unfortunately.