What can the NHS do if trans-identified patients refuse wards for their sex?

[Whatchamacallitt]

I've been looking at Transgender Reddit. Mostly it's just people comparing single sex wards to the Holocaust. But I found this thread particularly interesting.

Clearly they have every intention of being as obstructive and difficult for staff as possible by refusing to be placed on a ward for their sex whilst still demanding medical treatment.

Does anyone know what the legal situation would be for the hospital under these circumstances? Could they discharge the patient for refusing suitable accommodation or would their ill health be the priority? Would they allocate a much needed side room to the trans-identified patient to placate their temper tantrum?

There's no evidence that that happened. Just the words of a notorious homophobe who failed to provide any information so it could be verified.

Disagreeing regarding the legal permissibility of discharging a patient because they are being difficult does not make one a TRA. It's a lazy claim levied regularly on these forums. If you believe it you are free to search my post history.

If she's sufficiently unwell I think the hospital would have a hard time discharging her against her will

The hospital wouldn't need to discharge them. They would offer the patient treatment on a ward and it is up to the patient to accept or refuse that treatment.

So if a trans-identified patient refused treatment on a female/male ward but said they consented to medical treatment elsewhere, what would be the legal position of the hospital? Would they then be entitled to ask them to leave say A&E, or whatever area they presented in?

The patient has been offered appropriate medical treatment and they are refusing that treatment. If the patient refuses to go to a ward for treatment that is up to them.

The hospital wouldn't be leaving a patient in A and E or refusing treatment, the patient would be refusing to leave A and E and refusing treatment.

Much the same as if a grown adult refused treatment on an adult ward but said they consented to medical treatment in the NICU.

Treatment has been offered. It's wholly appropriate, it's within the law. If the patient then declines it, that's their choice.

The offer of treatment includes the location of treatment. They can't be treated if they consent to surgery 'but not in an operating theatre', or an X-ray 'but not in the radiology department'.

Another Reddit post in the same vein again making it perfectly clear they want treatment but want to dictate where they receive that treatment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1xax79x/living_will_to_refuse_treatment_in_agab_ward/

So does this mean then that anybody could bag themselves a private room - regardless of merit, individual need or sex - if they simply state that they do consent to treatment, but refuse to receive it in a men's and/or women's ward?

Often patients are physically wheeled into a ward on a bed - presumably the trans woman will be wheeled in to the men's regardless of preference and if they cause a fuss, security will be called.

I can't imagine a distressed and protesting patient being taken anywhere like that, outside of a bad tv drama.

I would think the options that were possible at the time and in the circumstances would be clearly shared, and if they were unacceptable to the patient even with all possible precautions, then discharge arrangements would be made with the patient.

I think this is the remnants of certain people believing themselves to be entitled to privileges not open to the rest of us. I've never encountered anybody being able to choose which NHS ward they were admitted to - that's a clinical & resource based decision carried out by medics.

Only in the lala land of transactivism do individuals decide that they get to choose - and if it invades the privacy and rights of others, even better.

The NHS is going to have to get used to telling the sacred caste NO.

Trans people do not want privacy though. They reject single rooms. They want to be placed on the wards for the opposite sea.

My mil was moved to different wards without any discussion or her permission.

If a patient doesn't want to be placed in a single sex ward, they would have to have that discussion before they are admitted, but i cant see how the hospital could guarantee such a request?

Some patients do not want to be isolated in their own rooms. Some are very ill and need to be close to the nurses station.

As always

All beds come with wrap around curtains, they could just close them, if a man has enough imagination to convince himself he's a woman, he can imagine he's on a women's ward. Sorted.

Yes the 2025 SC ruling and the 2026 ECHR guidance killed him. Not the cancer in 2023.

Yep when FiL was hospitalised went to visit weekly for about 8 weeks - he was never in the same place twice.

in 2023 I'd say it would be as likely as pigs flying in formation over the hospital.

The Supreme Court's clarification of the law about single sex spaces had not yet happened at that date, and NHS hospitals had been putting people of either sex onto wards with members of the other sex for as much as forty years: why would they suddenly have stopped doing so?

Namechanged just for this thread. This is my guestimate of what happened.

It is incredibly unlikely in 2023 that a hospital would not have put a transIDing male on a women's bay. The NHS is thoroughly captured and every hospital in the land had policies allowing gender self ID until 5 minutes ago, not to mention Annex B. So that part is highly unlikely to be true.

Many if not most cancer services (or any acute services) run at above capacity. Patients are put as outliers on other wards all the time, cancer patients who have to be in for chemo have to be in when their chemo is due, no matter how full the hospital is, so they either get put wherever there's a space or they get treated as a day case even when the chemo would usually be given as inpatient. Chemo isn't delayed for 16 days because of bed issues. It just isn't. Even in the first COVID lockdown we still had to find a way to admit people with COVID symptoms, if their chemo was due. So that part is highly unlikely to be true.

Things I think may have happened are:

He wasn't correctly diagnosed until too late, he was under a general medical service or some other wrong service because no one realised he had an aggressive, I'm guessing B cell, lymphoma. Young people with cancer are often diagnosed late and with a B cell lymphoma you haven't got time to waste, it grows very fast. I knew of a case years ago where surgeons removed the tumour having mistaken it for a sarcoma - 48 hours later it was back to the size it'd been before the surgery. That's nothing to do with trans.

Or, he was diagnosed and under haematology but was an outlier on a random ward due to bed issues, and the random ward didn't know how aggressively this kind of lymphoma can go and didn't clock how fast he was deteriorating. Especially they may not clock it in a young otherwise healthy person, those have a habit of looking ok until they're extremely unwell, in a way that doesn't happen with older people.This is possible, but he'd still have been seen by haematology at least daily in ward rounds on the random ward and they absolutely do know, so seems somewhat unlikely. Also nothing to do with trans.

Or, he came in with such advanced disease that treatment would have been futile,he was put in an available side room for privacy at end of life and expected to die imminently, and as he was young and strong he lived much longer than expected and needed much heftier doses of serious pain meds than either random ward, or haematologists unused to looking after young people with cancer, were used to or comfortable giving. Hence 16 days without treatment and uncontrolled pain. This is possible, but again, nothing to do with trans.

TLDR: no way a transwoman would be refused a womans bed in 2023, and whatever happened that was less than ideal was extremely unlikely to have been anything to do with trans discrimination.

100%.. bridges burned bombed and binned.
Cue: "You GC women are ssoooooo mean"...

Unfortunately hospitals are full of confused/delirious patients protesting about all sorts of things, particularly on admission. They get wheeled where they’re going regardless. The NHS is used to pacifying people but not giving in.

Thank you for this explanation. I did NHS hospital training (for a support staff role) in 2017 and although hardly anyone agreed when we were asked about it (I kept quiet because I was a proper terf and afraid of outing myself, but others were more vocal) the line was very much that a man calling himself a woman (this was made clear) had to be treated as a woman.

If mixed wards are common and it's all such a non-issue then why are transwomen making such a fuss about intruding in women's single-sex wards? Schrodinger's non-issue of course - vital for them but petty for women. Anyway, it's all sorted now so forget it.