Your Stories

I’ll never forget that day. I had just finished a home visit with a female patient, helping her use a new aid to take a bath upstairs which she was delighted to use right away. Her husband was downstairs. As I informed him I was leaving, he used the moment to corner me, trapping me against the wall. He leaned in to kiss me, ignoring my repeated attempts to say no. He overpowered me in the end. I was terrified. His wife, vulnerable upstairs, couldn’t help. I ducked and ran, reaching my car, locking myself inside.

In a panic, I drove away without using my navigation. Lost in the rural landscape, I found myself at a ford. With headlights behind me, I feared he was following, so I drove through, damaging my car in the process. Though I reported the incident, I felt the aftermath for years.

The Trust and police were supportive, but I received a note from him that made my skin crawl. Every year, I avoid the part of a local event where his farm appears, frozen and nauseated by the memory. It’s been over a decade, but I’ll never shake the feeling: he shouldn’t have done it.

At medical school, a male fellow med student asked me a few times to ride in his convertible car. I accepted a lift after lectures back to our accommodation one day. (On a platonic basis). As I was getting out of the car, I thanked him for the lift. He reached across and pinched my leg hard. When I looked at him he laughed and said “I just wanted to see what your sex face looked like”. I got out of the car and avoided him.

It happened 42 years ago but I still ‘beat myself up’ about not doing anything.

I was an SHO in a great little oncology department and keen at the time to be an oncologist. This was my first 6 months SHO job. Not relevant really but I was living with my BF at the time. I had 3 consultants and one of them started pursuing me. Initially it was unwanted ‘flirting’ but then he asked me to come away with him for the weekend and I said no. He had booked it already (he was a loathsome looking married man who I had absolutely no interest in).

Then one morning shortly after he forced me into a cupboard on the ward and I had to physically and violently fight him off. I hit him very hard. After that he made my life an absolute misery at work.

At the end of the 6 months I left oncology, deciding it was pointless in trying to pursue a career. I became a GP. I moved away. I never reported it thinking his word against mine, 30 years later I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and came back to that city for treatment. I was coming down the stairs in a different hospital and he was coming up.

The same man, a wee man – he was much bigger and more powerful in my memory. He didn’t recognise me and I said nothing. I had a female oncology consultant and she asked me casually if I’d worked with him during a consultation. He was retired but back at work. I could have said something at that point but to my shame said absolutely nothing.

Over the years I’ve replayed it over and over. I had counselling 20 years ago. I’ve considered going to the police, especially when I realised he was back working 30 years later, but I didn’t.

I have a daughter and daughters in law in medicine and hope that if it does happen to them they have the courage to deal with it.

I have seen and experienced many things over the years (including direct sexual harassment and assault), having previously worked in operational departments. Having moved into a digital health field, I have found the latent, background misogyny to be still present but I am used to it. However, recently this has become more personally directed at me by my clinical director.

I have placed a star next to the parts which I consider to misogynistic.

I have received comments from him that are, while acknowledging the department has massively progressed since I started in my role as head of the unit; gaslighting me and my experience to my (male) line manager – indicating that I am a histrionic female* who “must take the nuclear option”* in my professional relationships (I am not – quite the opposite, in fact) despite him being the one who was basically saying if I didn’t do what he wanted he would tell the executive level he had to leave his role as my clinical director due to me being ‘difficult’*, constantly demanding I qualify myself* (which I have never seen him say to my male equivalents), demanding that I produce the “line in law” to back up what I am saying or he will tell other consultants to ignore me and, my personal favourite, that I should be grateful* because “I have tried really, really hard to NOT take credit for the work you have done”*.

This is all because I had the audacity to say “no” to a consultant and challenge him on a subject for which he has little knowledge while putting in a social boundary due to feeling a little encroached upon*. Everything was fine until then and he was even happy to go round telling people I am a ‘national expert’ in my subject beforehand. However, apparently now I do not understand anything or know what I am talking about, must be mansplained to* and spoken to like a child*.

His behaviour has escalated over a few months to moving into my personal space*, ambushing me when on my own, separating and isolating me from colleagues so he can bully me while by myself and using coercive language such as “I think you’ll agree with me when I say…” (no – I don’t – and stop trying to convince me I should!). He has also taken to trying to be involved in every little operational task and decision in my department, claiming he feels “left out” if he doesn’t know every tiny thing that happens (even though he shouldn’t know, or need to) and is trying to involve himself in line managing my staff, even though I have asked him not to.

He has taken the stance that he knows better* on every subject and gets very angry and escalates if I suggest he should not be involved in these matters. The last in-person encounter had quite a sinister feel to it which I have still not recovered from. I have spoken to HR and told them I am planning my exit from the organisation due to intolerable working conditions.

I was asked by my TPD in core training at my initial meeting whether I had a partner, husband or any children, and had I thought about having children. This was so far off my radar at that time, I wasn’t interested in having my TPD ask about that – I wanted to talk about my training!

When working as an ST3 there was one consultant who creeped me out. He would always make sexist remarks, rub his lap if I was in his office to ask him a question and jokingly ask if I would come and sit on his knee to look at a CT scan. When we did ward rounds if we passed one of his consultant buddies (usually one particular orthopaedic surgeon) he would put his arm around me, pull me in close and make kissing noises towards my face, saying ‘look I get to have all the beautiful female trainees’. I was a new ST3 in a new hospital. I complained about it to my (male) educational supervisor who more or less laughed it off and said that was just how this consultant was. I asked if I could be not placed with him again and he said I would still have to rotate through the consultants which would include this consultant.

While I was on maternity leave I heard that he’d behaved in the same way towards a postgrad medical student who reported him. He has since retired/been suspended (I’m not sure which – he was close to retirement anyway) so I’m glad he won’t be able to behave like that at the workplace again.

I’m ashamed that I wasn’t the one to call him out, but I was also disappointed when one of the other (male) consultants in the department made a comment about what an awful time this consultant had been through as a result of the complaint, as if it wasn’t justified or was an overreaction. The discussions I’ve had with colleagues, particularly in the theatre team, since your talk Chelcie have been really helpful – we have all agreed we should go on active bystander training so we can be prepared to call people out on inappropriate behaviour. I’m so grateful that you are doing the work you are doing. Thank you.

I have worked in the NHS for a little over 16 years since commencing my training as an ODP at 18. The majority of my career has been worked in theatres and critical care, though over the last few years I have worked outside of this environment.

As such I have literally and figuratively ‘grown up’ experiencing and witnessing operating theatre ‘banter’ and the sexist and sexually unsafe behaviours and attitudes which are rife therein.

My experiences span several NHS hospitals, rather than being specific to one trust. These range from preferential treatment of certain female colleagues by male leaders based on appearance- including ‘scoring’ us by appearance- to lewd comments, sexually themed jokes and explicit questions.

Beyond this, to non-consensual touching such as being pressed/rubbed against passing the bed or trolley in the anaesthetic room, having hands put in my scrub pockets to ‘pass’ me something such that my breasts or bottom were touched, or being ‘invited’ to on call rooms.

What pains me most now is just how normal I believed it all to be. It was so widely acknowledged and accepted. It was this culture that meant that when a male doctor assaulted me in a much more invasive way, I simply avoided him until he rotated away. It didn’t even occur to me to report it.

I am in a female dominated profession and in retrospect I have experienced harassment and discrimination for being a woman throughout my career. I have only felt comfortable describing it in these terms since getting older and have been able to get some perspective on my career as a whole. There were always the male colleagues you were advised against being on your own with … not an explicit warning, but the ‘eyebrow raise and sigh’ and the description of forty-year olds as being ‘a bit of a lad’. When I was a student a male nurse listed all his female colleagues in order of ‘shag-ability’ in the middle of the ward and no one said anything. As a newly qualified nurse I worked hard to stay below the radar of a charge nurse who would pass the keys to the medication trolley by grabbing your outstretched hand and placing them in your palm whilst caressing it. These behaviours and those like it, were so common as to be unremarkable. The incident I want to share is a sexual assault, and in truth it wasn’t the assault that hurt or that stayed with me. It was the overwhelming feeling of sadness and disappointment in my line manager. I love being a mental health nurse and have been one for nearly thirty years. I have held many senior positions and at the start of my career I was very focussed on developing my professional expertise. As a young female ward manager I was aware of the double standards around leadership, my male peers could ‘date’ multiple junior colleagues and they would never be held to account for reckless behaviour on nights out to ‘blow off steam’. These choices would not be tolerated in a female leader. To maintain a position of respect and responsibility I had to work to guard my reputation at all times. I was earnest and dedicated. I certainly didn’t date other staff or discuss my personal life, I didn’t drink to excess and left work nights early. In retrospect I think I felt I had earned a measure of protection because of this extra work I had done. That was why when it happened, I found it all the more shocking. It was my leaving party, I had been promoted and was moving on. I had arrived late because I had covered some work as a favour and walked in sober to find most of my work friends had started early. I was feeling pleased and proud of my success. My line manager was married, and frequently had ‘relationships’ with junior and temporary female staff. The women shook their heads over this accepted phenomenon, the men seemed to be in awe of it and no one questioned it because of his professional capability and personal charisma. I’d always had a good relationship with him, not close but he promoted me. I worked hard, kept my head down and was successful. He was at my leaving do and beckoned me over, it was noisy and I thought he wanted to congratulate me. He pushed me against the wall and put his tongue in my mouth, kissing me. I was astonished. It took me a moment to realise what had happened, I thought he must have gone mad. I pushed him back and he grinned at me and said ‘I’ve always wanted to do that’. I felt sad for myself and disappointed that my trust was so publicly betrayed. I could believe all the effort I had put into trying to prove myself worthy to be as ‘good as him, but in that instance I was so sorry for him, with all that power, respect and opportunity, wasting it on an action so shabby and pointless. I turned around left the pub and I left the area the next day to start my new job. I don’t know who saw what happened, but I never spoke to any of them again. I had worked in that hospital for nearly five years, for most of them in senior positions and felt it counted for nothing in the end. Of course, that is not the case and I am sure some of the people there would have been supportive if I had asked them for help. I couldn’t bear to do it though and see whose eyes would slide away. Who would mumble ‘he’s just messing about, ignore him’. I didn’t want to hear anyone say ‘you know what he’s like’, because I did. We all did. I am ashamed to say that I thought anyone getting mixed up with him knew what they were doing because he was hardly in disguise. It’s more complicated than that though, I’m not advocating the banning of relationships that start at work. However, they do leave the person with the least power vulnerable personally and potentially professionally compromised, I would like to see national policy ensuring fairness in this matter. I was in a position of authority, in a public space, with friends nearby and he just took what he wanted. Not because he was even particularly attracted to me, but because he could … on a whim and out of curiosity. I couldn’t do a thing about it then. But it changed me, I learned a lot from that experience. There isn’t anything you can be, do, wear, or say to stop people harassing or assaulting you … the only thing that predicts any person being victimised is being next to an unchecked predator. I have never let one slide since.