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Accessing care as a transgender person

Posted By hekagj95

"Accessing care as a transgender person"

About: Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital (Wonford)

(as a service user),

I've accessed a variety of services at Wonford in the last year, most recently the fracture clinic, physiotherapy, and gynaecology. In some areas I have felt rushed through, and in others I've received excellent care. However, in every area and on all of my medical letters/documentation I am consistently misgendered. I have messaged MyCare about changing my pronouns, and they were able to retrospectively change previous letters, but new letters are still misgendering me and it seems that they will continue to. 

Do staff not realise the impact of gender dysphoria on mental health? Do they just not know about LGBTQ issues? Or is the electronic system not set up to support transgender patients by flagging pronouns? It doesn't really matter which to me, it has huge impact on my mental health every time. 

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Responses

Response from Teresa Sturm, Matron, Patient Experience Team, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust last week
Teresa Sturm
Matron, Patient Experience Team,
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

My role as matron in the patient experience team covers both northern and eastern service at Royal Devon.

Submitted on 19/04/2024 at 13:06
Published on Care Opinion at 13:06

picture of Teresa Sturm

Dear hekagj95,

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience of our services at Wonford. It sounds as though some experiences are better than others and I apologise for the instances where you have felt rushed.

I am very sorry for the continued issues you are having with letters and I have shared your story with the Clinical Admin Lead. As Care Opinion is anonymous would you be able to email the patient experience team so we can look into this for you in more detail rduh.patientexperience@nhs.net

I am very sorry for the distress and impact this has had and keen to understand what has happened and why it has continued to happen after the MyCare team had been informed. I would also like to share your experience with our electronic database team.

In the meantime if you have the My chart app you can edit gender identity. In the menu screen go to personal information and edit there. I would like to reassure you that staff have access to LGBTQ awareness training but I will also share your story with the inclusion lead.

Your feedback is much appreciated and thank you again for bringing this to my attention.

Best wishes

Teresa

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful

Update posted by hekagj95 (a service user)

Thank you, I will email the patient experience team with more details.

Unfortunately there are no accurate options for anyone who identifies outside of the gender binary in the MyCare personal information section. The options are; Male, Female, Tansgender Male, Transgender Female, and Other, and no options to specify pronouns. As a non-binary person none of these describe me, which is why I had to message the Mycare team seperately to ask for they/them pronouns. No one on any of my care teams, except for occupational health, have ever seen 'other' on my info and asked for my pronouns, or used they/them to be safe. I question whether it is even clearly visible on the EPIC system when they see me.

As I work for the NHS myself, non-clinical, I am aware of exactly how little LGBTQ+ awareness training is available to the general staff and would hope that there is something much more sufficient in place for employees actually seeing, speaking to and writing about patients. However if there is, then I feel it is clearly not effective.

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