Your Stories

I’ve worked in elderly care since I was 17, in which I was a sleep over carer for an elderly gentleman who paid privately. He continuously harassed me, stood over me while I slept doing god knows what, touched me constantly, made inappropriate comments, I heard him masturbating and saying my name every night and eventually called me in and exposed himself to me. I reported him almost daily but I couldn’t leave the job as I needed the money and my management refused to take me off those shifts. My experiences were swept under the carpet and never dealt with, the most that he would get was a phone call which he would rarely answer. I continued to work in elderly care for two years in which I was harassed, touched and inappropriately treated by men almost every male call but my management basically told me “you’re a young girl and these are frustrated men what did you expect?” and also told me it was my own fault for my tunic being so “form fitting.” Then when I was 19 I began working in mental health care, in which basically the same things happened. It’s just depressing to know that men even though they may have dementia, schizophrenia they still remember to treat women like this.

When I first joined the ambulance service I had an intensive three week course on emergency blue light driving. The instructor was a paramedic male who was married with kids, twice my age. From the start he made it clear it was down to him to fail or pass any of us and made lewd comments to the other male instructor about woman’s bodies, previous sexual conquests, how he cheated on his wife etc. He made it clear that anyone who couldn’t accept banter would not pass his course or fit in with the service. He began texting me in the evenings and asking to meet up or for sexy photos. I felt really uncomfortable and wanted to report him but I also wanted to pass. It was the longest 3 weeks ever, but thankfully I did pass without having to give him any photos or sexual favours. A few months later, I was on supervised practice as a paramedic student and my mentor was a senior male supervisor. We were checking our vehicle & drugs at the start of our shift when he forced himself on me, kissing me on the mouth but I refused to open mine and pushed him back, off of me. He said I needed to learn to be nicer if I wanted to pass and that he expected a better welcome at the start & end of each shift. I suffered several weeks of sexual comments and innuendo before moving to a different station & having a lovely new mentor. I’ve felt it difficult to report this because obviously you want to succeed in your career & these men have been with the service for decades and are in senior positions. Misogyny is still rife among the older males in the service but thankfully the younger generation are making things better, albeit it slowly.

A male SHO of mine dealt with my giving constructive feedback to him re being poorly prepared on ward rounds, by putting his arm round me and giving my shoulder a squeeze and saying, ” I’ll give it a go sweetheart”.

I am a 58 year old consultant surgeon, (who happens to be female) and have seen most of it over the years- but quite honestly- I had no mechanism to respond- apart from wanting to smack the little shit.

I ran the occurence informally on an unnamed basis by the Trust Director of Medical Education, looking for a somewhat more professional strategy. SHE, yes she, suggested asking him if it happened again, “who are you, Harvey Weinstein…..”

The nurses in the tea room who overheard this conversation, weren’t any more impressed than I was with this advice. The savvy dept staff grade and I chatted and she took the boy aside and spoke to him re the importance of respecting physical boundaries at work. He didn’t do it again….to me at least.

I think this behaviour is endemic towards women in authority , and while it hasn’t damaged me- it’s woeful that a young man would use unwanted touching as a mechanism to somehow try and be in charge.

I have now left the NHS but as a house-officer I was groped whilst assisting a mastectomy. The consultant anaesthetist slid his hand under the drapes and groped me between my legs. I was so shocked I froze. The surgeon told me off for being distracted. I told myself to put the patient (who had cancer) first and completed the op. After she’d gone to recovery I spoke angrily to the anaesthetist in the corridor outside theatre and warned him to never touch me again. He put his arm around me and said “oh you just don’t know me very well”.

I went into the changing rooms and burst into tears. The nursing sister who found me begged me to report him because “it’s been going on for years but nobody believes the nurses”.

I went straight to the chief exec and told him everything. He took me seriously but the next day my boss told me not to make a fuss because “the guy is having problems at home”. I couldn’t believe my ears. Months later I heard that the Deanery had held a “tribunal” but dismissed my case due to lack of evidence. I wasn’t invited so I didn’t know until after I’d moved county for my SHO rotation. As far as I know no nurses were invited either.

I wish I had called the police, as he may still be abusing staff to this day, so I feel I failed. But I am also disgusted with the terrible leadership (or lack of) and old boy network behaviour.

Last week I was seeing patients on the ward and another consultant colleague came up and grabbed me, shouting ‘no means no, I’ve got witnesses here.’

He knows I was sexually assaulted as a junior doctor by another consultant who confessed but in a formal complaint they said he was entitled to turn on me. My colleague behaves himself when we’re speaking but enjoys showing patients, juniors and staff a clear demonstration of his attitude to women. I’m disgusted by the GMC, their pointless statements and what they have enabled.

Over the years working in the UK as an NHS doctor I’ve experienced intermittent (and at times sustained) harassment and sexist behaviour, just as I imagine so many women have. These include physical incidents (which I have not reported as I genuinely wouldn’t have known who to inform at the time). One such incident occurred when I was working as a newly qualified House Officer and a male Surgical Consultant with no warning put his hand down the back of my trousers to tuck a label sticking out of my knickers “back-in”. This was on a ward round and I was mortified. He could have just said ‘your label is sticking out’ surely!

As an SHO working nights there was a male Registrar who would always try to steer the conversation around to sex and ask about my relationship (with long term partner) which made me feel uncomfortable. We were the only two doctors on the shift and I just couldn’t avoid him.

As a Registrar I married and got pregnant a few years later. Whilst pregnant with my first I was working my on calls as a single ‘on-site’ doctor on a small ICU. I suffered from pelvic pain early on and could not stand for long periods. I tried to plan for a change to my ‘out of hours’ work for later in pregnancy. I was told by the male Consultant in charge, when presenting my suggestion to forward plan the rota, that ‘pregnancy was not an illness’ and I should not need any adjustments.

I tried hard to work as normally when pregnant despite finding both walking and standing painful at all times. I would struggle to walk between the ward I was working on and meetings elsewhere in the hospital. I was fed back to by my male Consultant supervisor that I was too junior to decide which meetings to miss and which to go to. There were no considered questions as to why I wouldn’t manage to get to some meetings that were far away, or would arrive late, and I just took this ‘advice’ on the chin not wanting to make trouble.

Shortly after a (female) colleague noticed that I was coughing often at work and listened to my chest finding crepitations. I took time off for chest infection at 19 weeks pregnant. Shortly after my return to work (on nights) a senior male Consultant (the department head) invited me to view a patient treatment at a site 2 hours drive from base. When I declined he berated me for not taking up the offer (I would have had to drive post night shift for 4 hours for the trip on same day), saying that he would have ‘done anything for that experience when a trainee and nothing would have stopped him’. Obviously he had never been pregnant and had to consider the welfare of his unborn child in his decision making about driving post night shift.

I was signed off work around 3 weeks later for a brief period of pregnancy until the third trimester following a threatened miscarriage. I worked the last 15 weeks of pregnancy. I was asked by two separate male Consultant colleagues if I would both consider flying abroad at 16 weeks after giving birth to present at a conference and undertaking an extra opportunity at the speciality college during my ‘time off’ (maternity leave). I declined both.

On returning to work after a year of maternity leave at a supervisor meeting with same male Consultant I was told that the department had been impressed that, unlike during my pregnancy, I had not been using having a child at home as a reason not to work hard and put the effort in.

More latterly as a consultant I have found that in meetings male colleagues will talk over female ALL the time (I had thought that this was just an issue as a junior doctor, but no it continues). I have been made to feel worthless in group job planning when, after hearing from every other consultant about additional non-job-planned work, I pointed out to the chair (male department lead) that that I had not had an opportunity to present mine. I was told as chairs were being put away that they had run out of time and I should not be asked or saying yes to extra work (despite having said how much extra he did). I felt humiliated. I explained that I had been missed to the non-clinical manager in the meeting (a woman) who acknowledged this, and wrote down my additional duties. I spoke with the doctor who had run the meeting after it finished and got no recognition of the issue (I ended up apologising for being upset!).

More recently our consultant rota required a move to being in ‘teams’ to manage staffing in the pandemic. A male consultant colleague allocated as lead for our team told me ‘you are going to be my bitch’ in front of a whole room of juniors. I was shocked and said ‘not even my husband gets to call me that’. I mentioned (in passing) this incident to team clinical manager. I don’t think there was any action taken (the incident was put down to stress), and I have been left feeling annoyed with myself for not taking this further.

As a very junior doctor I was told by a senior that my place was at home. That my husband must be embarrassed to need me to work. I explained my boyfriend had an office job with average salary the senior told me I could do better. He later told me he would consider “doing me” if I wanted something better as I was clearly “easy” for living with my boyfriend. He repeated this all week while also pointing out I’d look better with more effort. I complained to the hospital after seeing him make a nurse colleague cry with similar remarks. I braved standing up as it wasn’t just me. I was told they were short staffed and they would try not to rota us together.