Patient wanted female nurse – but got one with stubble and deep voice
A WOMAN who requested a female nurse for an intimate examination at an NHS clinic was left ‘embarrassed and distressed’ when a pre-operative transsexual with a deep voice and chin stubble was assigned to her care.
The nurse claimed to identify as female but the patient declined to undergo the cervical smear test.
She said the nurse ‘had an obviously male appearance... close- cropped hair, a male facial appearance and voice, a large number of tattoos and facial stubble’.
The patient, who is in her 40s but does not want to be named, had requested a female nurse because of the test’s intimate nature and when she said there had been a mistake, the nurse told her: ‘My gender is not male. I’m a transsexual.’
The patient said the experience was ‘bad enough for a forty- something mother’ and could have been even more harmful for a vulnerable person such as her 17-year-old daughter. ‘Peoby ple who are not comfortable about this are presented as bigots and this is kind of how I was made to feel about it,’ she told the Sunday Times. She made an official complaint and has now had an apology from the clinic.
James Caspian, a psychotherapist who works with transgender people, said such situations would become more common. Equalities minister Justine Greening is considering a change in the law which would let transgender people ‘self-certify’ their gender without a doctor’s oversight.
Mr Caspian said: ‘ Politicians have not thought through all the implications of self-certification.’
It is understood that the nurse, while self-identifying as a woman, had not been employed on that basis and was allocated to the patient due to a clerical error. The patient said her complaint about the incident, which happened in September at a clinic run the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, was not about the nurse’s appearance or gender status.
But with the number of people identifying as transgender rising every year, incidents relating to gender-sensitive procedures within the NHS are likely to increase. A spokesman for the trust said: ‘We apologised to this patient for the recording error and because the staff member accepted they didn’t handle the situation appropriately; the patient needed to feel listened to. Trust policy is to consider seriously all requests for clinicians of a particular gender.’
NHS guidelines say its transgender employees receive equal treatment and protection from discrimination at work but does not go into specifics about procedures. The national census will ask every home in England and Wales if a transgender person lives there. The question, likely to be in the 2021 census, will be the first official attempt to count people who say they were born in the wrong sex.
‘Did not handle this properly’