Your Stories

I was on an MDT ward round – several consultants from different disciplines. I was the only female consultant. One of my colleagues stood back to let me through the door, he then guided me through with his hand in the small of my back letting it slip down to feel my arse.

I have had so many issues with sexism in medicine in my 20 years as a doctor. This incident happened in the NHS, but I no longer work in the UK. Thank you for your campaign.

I worked for a consultant who at the time was clinical director for the department. I started when I was 21 and the youngest female there. I would routinely be touched, grabbed on my waist, if I were typing they would come up behind me and rub my shoulders or make inappropriate comments alluding to if I had any secret piercings. The older female colleagues I worked with knew and would try to not leave me alone.

Another incident happened when I went into a cupboard to collect some admin supplies, it was a walk in cupboard, the doctor came in behind me and wouldn’t let me out, asked me what I would do to get out of the cupboard.

Following falling pregnant and having a child comments were made by this doctor that I was now “sullied”. I was told if I reported it I would never work in the NHS again due to their seniority, I have since moved departments.

As a medical student myself and 3 female students were taught how to do a cardiovascular examination by a consultant surgeon (that should have been a red flag there and then). He insisted on showing us personally where the apex beat was by putting his hand inside our blouses to check we had one in the right place. We were told he would ruin us if we complained.

As a junior doctor I was told I would only get a SHO job in ED if I was prepared to sleep with one of the bosses. The same boss was loudly discussing if I was “up for it” with a colleague in front of other staff. He also asked me if I had received my “brown wings” and offered to help me get them – I didn’t have a clue what he was on about.

A cardiologist I was doing a post take round with commented that his ward round would go much better if all the “girlie doctors” would just get their tits out like X (another SHO who had large breasts), she was present when he said this and was wearing a very demure outfit.

I was repeatedly asked if I was married by senior male doctors. When I said no I was asked if I had a boyfriend. When I said no they laughed and announced loudly that I must be a lesbian then.I was humiliated on a ward round after I had a new hair cut. The consultant endocrinologist decided he would make a joke about how I must have been electrocuted. I asked him if he was trying to make himself feel better by making fun of me, he then kicked me off his ward round and complained to the Dean.

I’ve been asked at multiple interviews if I plan to have children.

I’ve had senior male colleagues suggest I should just go home and make my husband dinner instead of working.

I could go on and on…

Sadly it doesn’t stop when you become a consultant and it doesn’t stop when you leave the UK. My recent stories include being called a witches coven because a group of female consultants were seen having coffee together, being asked if my husband objects to me wearing the trousers, do I have short hair because I don’t want to look beautiful for my patients, being called a bossy bitch by a colleague and my latest one is being invited to be the hospital Equity and Harrassment Lead for the junior doctors – the CMO asked if I understood what harrassment involved, I told him that it would be impossible to find a female doctor of my years that hadn’t experienced harrassment, he then called me boudicca and told me he didn’t want me launching a feminist campaign.

And still we endeavour to succeed.

I am coming to the end of my F1 year, and even in my short career so far I have noticed the massive gender gap. In my surgical placement we had the opportunity to attend theatre, and it quickly became apparent that the male doctors were offered this far more frequently than the women. Senior staff often assumed that we were not interested in surgery and we were not offered the same opportunities or taken as seriously if we felt a patient was unwell.

There was one shift where I was on a ward round with a male consultant, registrar and physicians associate (PA). Each time the consultant would tell his plans to the PA despite the fact that I was holding the patients notes to document them. They also frequently would speak whilst turned away and so I couldn’t hear what the plans were. The PA was also frequently condescending, assuming I didn’t know how to do simple things such as request appropriate blood tests or fill out OGD request forms.

I made a complaint about a registrar (who already had a bad reputation) after I witnessed him being particularly unsafe with a patient. Following this, he started to purposefully call me by the wrong name every time he saw me. There was also a locum SHO who on one occasion screamed at two nurses who asked him to clarify his clinical assessment (he claimed a patient had a NEWS of 2, but when they repeated the obs a minute later they actually had a NEWS of 10 and looked very unwell). When another male doctor came to see what was happening he was really pleasant, saying that he is a nice guy but ‘can become dangerous if he’s angry’.

When I moved round to my acute medical block it quickly became apparent that there was one consultant who was notoriously difficult to work with. He was rude, demanding, impatient and generally bad-tempered. He was particularly foul to female juniors, often critical of the smallest mistakes and frequently not trusting what he was told. He didn’t bother to learn the names of female staff, and if a female doctor was down in ED he would frequently comment that they ‘shouldn’t bother coming back’ to the ward.

He frequently would praise male members of staff for work carried out by female peers or superiors. He also would often only select male members of staff to go with him on ward rounds, and pulled two of them away from taks they were in the middle of despite me offering that I was free to go with him. During one board round he asked me to pass him a set of notes, and then when I held them out to him he said ‘well what does it say then’. During the same board round he aggressively argued with a cardiology ST7 about a patient who she had assessed with a cardiology problem, and would talk over the top of her while she tried to offer her specialist opinion.

Overall there are some lovely people within the trust and most of the time the good outweighs the bad. However, at times it has been too much. There was a point where, after spending multiple shifts with these consultants in one week and having bad experience after bad experience, I started getting daily panic attacks. The thought of having to go back to work and face these members of staff were making me physically ill. Thankfully the worst of this has passed now but I still often feel uncomfortable around these members of staff – something that shouldn’t still happen in a place of work.

I started an operation on a patient when the consultant who was supposed to be supervising me suddenly aggressively started making innuendo comments. He had been making strange comments since I’d started working there and his colleagues would laugh about how he had this ‘funny’ hate / fear of women, even though he was married. I tried to ignore it and focus on training as a surgeon. One day he turned on me and started kissing me on the mouth and touching my thigh. I was horrified but realised I hadn’t noticed as he was talking he had taken me to an office where there was nobody else around. I didn’t expect him to do that and just froze. I couldn’t react and couldn’t stop him. I didn’t tell anyone for months. Eventually I reported him to the GMC who said he was entitled to behave like that because I was an adult and not a patient. I stayed in my specialty but years later cannot trust anyone and still have nightmares. My colleagues mostly find it tedious to hear about this, either their eyes glaze over or they get angry because they believe it’s all fine and I shouldn’t be unhappy.

We had gone for coffee after the ward round: a male consultant, a male reg, a female junior doctor, and a female nurse. The male reg spent the entire 15 mins talking about how much money can be made from convincing beautiful women they aren’t quite perfect and that they need vulval surgery/varicose vein surgery/breast surgery, etc. He described how his previous juniors were ‘like supermodels’ but despite their looks came to him all the time looking for cosmetic surgery. He then went on to say that pelvic pain is a great speciality for money making as it is so underfunded in the NHS and that he really admired the men who have set up private clinics as women get so desperate they will pay anything.

The male consultant laughed along the entire time and neither seemed to notice how uncomfortable the two female junior members of the team were.

At medical school socials, younger students are often taken advantage of by older students and by junior doctors. Inevitably it’s the youngest, drunkest girl in the room. One doctor admitted that the reason he still attends university socials is because “it’s easy to have sex”.