Your Stories

A consultant was making jokes about how, as a female trainee, I must be having an affair with his colleague as it was unusual for him to allow trainees to operate. My next boss said he was ‘worried about what people would say about him’ so I couldn’t do his extra lists. I asked the first chap, confidentially and politely, to stop telling his jokes because of the effect it was having. He became very aggressive and threatened me “do you want to make this formal? I’ll make sure it’s far worse for you than it is for me”.

Consultants didn’t do ward rounds, they just appeared on the ward and dictated notes, so you had to try and grab the consultant team you needed if you had questions. Managed to catch the consultant, and I’m mid explanation of the problem when a different consultant interrupts me, waving his patients folder in my face “this folder is a state get the notes tidied up now!” Dropped the folder on top of the open one in my hands I’m reading my patients obs from. He wasn’t my consultant, and it wasn’t one of my patients, but he figured being the nearest female F1 made his patients messy notes my problem.

I am exhausted by the constant subconscious sexism. The comments that I should get a consultant job somewhere quiet so I can spend more time with my child, projects being given to male colleagues because I’m less than full time and less visible, the attitude that I’m less dedicated because I have to leave for nursery pick up or the judgement that I’m staying late for a case and not going home for my child’s bed time. I am grateful not to have experienced outward sexism or sexual harassment and then I realise how sad that is. Why should I be grateful for that? It should just be the norm.

It is a sad reality that I can’t write about my experiences with inappropriate behaviour, sexual harassment, sexual behaviours or even physical assault (of a sexual nature in this case) from patients because where would I start? I’m not talking about the frightened dementia patient who grabs out or says something inappropriate, but people who have complete control over their behaviour. Even as a student (many years ago), I quickly realised this was “part of the job” and there was no point in even reporting it because it was never taken seriously by those above. Examples range from inappropriate remarks, to masturbation in front of me/over the phone, to gropes/touching. Obviously, that isn’t “part of the job” but is very common. However, the one experience I can describe (and still makes me sick to my stomach) is one where it was a colleague (and mentor). He was known to be a (shall we say horrible person) and he always made you cringe and the whole shift would be apologising to patients/families for his rudeness. But on this particular shift, things got extra weird. He’d previously called me “sexy” and had asked to take photos of me in uniform, which I had of course declined – it is worth noting this was in front of other colleagues who remained painfully silent. But here we were, sitting on scene having discharged the patient, and he starts to make comments on my body. He offers to buy me clothes from the shop we’ve just been in to, so long as he can “see you in them sexy” and kept pushing me to accept his advances. The inappropriate comments continued all shift, as did the ‘accidentally walking into me’ (including hands touching me by “accident”) in the back of the ambulance, always whilst I was providing patient care, probably knowing I would almost certainly say nothing and carry on. I was trapped. Literally trapped in a tin box for 12 hours with a man who, as a student, had extreme power over me even in the context of being universally disliked by others. People had previously witnessed his inappropriate comments and said nothing so I felt completely powerless to say anything. Turns out my fears on speaking up were right, because I opened up to a trusted colleague a few weeks later and all I got was “well that’s X for you, don’t let it bother you”, the same dismissal as I’d got used to for patient events. Even all these years later, this makes me shudder and fearful. The culture in my former workplaces around sexual misconduct, from words to actions, is abhorrent. It is normalised, accepted and victims or survivors are gaslighted and left without compassion or support.

During admissions to medical school a female candidate was rated really highly by most of the panel apart from the lead admissions tutor (a man) who refused to rate her highly despite her objectively performing well as he didn’t want to admit ‘any more shy girls, as they always have problems’.