NHS not Transgender-Friendly Enough, Says Nurse

NHS upsets transgender patients

A nurse who works in a hospital and is also a transgender patient claims that the NHS fails to meet the expectations of both adults and children who are transgender. 53 year old Kirsty Cass labours at hospital in southern part of England. She was a patient of NHS undergoing a gender reassignment surgery in 2012. She said that when she regained consciousness she recollected a staff member referring to her as a “he” and found it demoralising.

She told BBC News she was a female and there was another patient who had the same surgery as her and told her that she was referred to by one of the assists as ‘mate’ and was not what patients need. After a few years, Kirsty went to another NHS hospital, to get a biopsy done for the possibility of cancer. Luckily, the tests were negative, but she had a very stressful stay in the ward yet again. She was taken back to the male ward. The nurse on duty seated at a desk looked at her and questioned why a female was brought into that ward. She was petrified and felt so embarrassed that she burst into tears.

According to the professional union the Royal College of Nursing, transgender patients more or less face such predisposition and face an absence of being understood very often. It conducted a survey comprising of about one thousand two hundred nurse staff and discovered that a small number of them were taught well in this area. About seventy six per cent stated that further training was needed for all staff dealing with health care in order to improve care.

One of the nurses took care of a girl who wished to be a boy and nobody in the ward had an idea so as to what to say or do. So she took this chance to have a word with the patients, and they felt pleased that someone asked them how they would like to be addressed and took out some time to speak with them about the same.

Transgender

Gender can go further than basic anatomy is about the way an individual classifies themselves. They may look like a female but feel like a man or it could be the other way round. Some people also would consider calling themselves genderless.

A discrepancy between genders can be stressful. And when such is the situation, it is then a medical circumstance called as gender dysphoria. It is not connected to gender, and being transgender does not necessarily make one queer.

Some people may ask to be treated with the help of hormones or may opt for surgery to enhance their bodily appearance while yet some may not do so. The government claimed to work on developing and to excel staff training in this area.

The RCN created supervision called Fair Care for Transpatients that give best training. It states that the preference of each patient should be taken into consideration whilst trying to determine which gender ward they must be assigned to.