Your Stories

My supervisor would take any chance he could to touch me and always in full view of the rest of the team. Initially he would place his hands on my arms and back. But this escalated to his hands on my thigh during a teaching in front of all the other consultants. He once grabbed me by my neck and pulled me back when I went in the wrong direction during the ward round. I started to place myself across the room from him and tried to keep quiet to avoid attracting his attention, but he gravitated towards me anyway. I even lied about being engaged, so that he would leave me alone.

I sought advice from several colleagues and nobody was surprised. Everyone had seen what was happening. They said that I was his type and this was far from the first time this had happened.

When I eventually filed a complaint I was met with comments including “he’s taken quite a liking to you” and “Did you tell him not to? I would never let anyone touch me like that at work”.

At the trust I was in, almost all the female FY1s had experiences like this from all levels of male colleagues, but escalating it was an exhausting and unsatisfactory process so people chose to keep quiet. Some were afraid that that saying anything would negatively impact their careers. One was even told that the consultants were untouchable and escalating the matter wouldn’t change anything.

Being a doctor is hard enough without constantly having to think about how to avoid men’s sexual advances. I hope that this culture changes and that we are able to feel safe and respected in our work environment in the future.

A patient threatened to rape me. My (male) manager laughed and said “well what do we expect, bringing a beautiful woman on the ward?”.

I work as a senior pharmacist in a mental health hospital and have so many stories. Consultant psychiatrist who I just met told me I had ‘arresting eyes’, a worker in the Trust MHA (mental health act) office who kept messaging me on Facebook asking me out, telling me I’m his queen despite the fact he had a wife and child on the way. Another who always commented on my lips and how good they looked. (I like wearing bright lipsticks). An IT worker who told me I was very tasty from behind as I was bending down and then proceeded to sexually harass me for months (he was at least 30 years older than me), staring, touching me, constantly hanging around. I complained to my manager who had a quiet word. Didn’t stop him at all. I just gave up in the end. Everyone in the department thought it was funny. He left eventually and then emailed me asking me to meet him.

I was a new FY1 and struggling a bit on my first medical placement with a lack of confidence and feeling overwhelmed at times on my busy ward. I had spent an evening shift clerking and the on call consultant said he was very pleased with my work and would pass on the feedback to my educational supervisor. My supervisor came up to me on the ward the next day and in front of the team said “Dr X told me he was impressed with your work clerking last night – he probably fancies you.”

I am not a doctor but recently I undertook a placement in an NHS hospital department. One afternoon while sitting in with a male consultant and a male nurse I heard them refer to another (female) consultant as Frigid Brigid. They both seemed to think they were very funny.

I never thought sexism at work was an issue until a male colleague opened my eyes to the existence of inequality and sexism. Ironically, a few minutes later he rubbed my back tried to sleep with me but that’s another story. Here are my experiences:

• as an F2 on call I received a very odd bleep from my registrar who wasn’t on call and was at home. He was asking me bizarre things about a patient before saying “let’s go for dinner”. As an Fy2 it’s hard to know how to react especially as there’s a power imbalance.
• again, as an fy2, I knew a colleague was sleeping with a senior. I was on call with him when she called and he described what I was wearing and how good I looked. I felt uncomfortable and disgusted and worried how my colleague-a friend-would feel.
• I got a choice of two jobs part way through my training. I emailed a TPD to get some advice as couldn’t decide which to do. I got a reply “growing up is hard to do”. Well, they didn’t know how old I was, what I’d been through (not much incidentally) and I felt this was irrelevant.
• I was told as a female with children I shouldn’t work on certain units and to work in “Unit x or y as the people there have children so will understand”. I’d never mentioned how my child would fit in to my career and I worked full time so not sure where this came from. This was in a meeting with a man with children who worked on a certain unit. Clearly men with children are allowed! As an extra issue, the unit where people did have kids weren’t always understanding either.
• my pregnancy was described as an illness (?!)
• I was told that another female colleague probably wouldn’t join my speciality as she has children…like that should matter and also, they clearly assumed I didn’t want children.

In the COVID19 pandemic I was allocated to a new role and team. I was upset to find that my new senior would be a consultant who had sexual harassed me during my foundation years, but I thought that given that we were in the middle of a pandemic he might not repeat the behaviour. On our second day we were sat having lunch and he wanted to show me his new Ultrasound pen – to demonstrate how the device could stream images to your phone. Once I was holding it he moved my hand and told me I should be holding it like a sex toy instead. I didn’t challenge him as we’d be returning to the acute ward after lunch. On talking to another female senior, I was informed that he was known for this behaviour, that he’d got away with so much before and he was capable of ruining careers.

I was an FY1 and was in my first medical job. I was doing a taster week in the speciality I wanted to do, and I got told by one of the senior members of that speciality that the reason why the NHS is failing is because of female doctors. Because apparently we all want to go part time and the NHS can’t cope. Not only is >50% of the ENTIRE hospital work force female, but this was very presumptive that all females want to go part time, and that this has any impact on work productivity.