Your Stories

Here we share your stories of sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault in healthcare. Every story is a powerful testimony, describing lived experiences and the impact of sexual violence.

Thank you to every person who has shared their story with us.

Content warnings

These stories contain descriptions of sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual violence.

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All Stories — Page 1 of 16

232

I was touched inappropriately by an elderly patient. I reported this to my male supervisor; he laughed, saying I should be happy that men like me. Later, the same supervisor shared the event with the wider team using rude language and claiming I must have liked that so much I came to him to brag about this. Nothing was done.

231

The collegue in question started by putting his hand on my back or shoulder too frequently whilst I was on shift. I was about to report this to his line manager when one day, he squeezed behind me through a very tight gap. Instead of saying excuse me so I could step aside, he pushed his groin into my bottom, and proceeded to put both of his hands on my shoulders making an inappropriate remark to me. I chose to blow the whistle because this behaviour is totally unacceptable and also to prevent him from doing it to anyone else.

230

One of the surgeries I observed during my first placement as a medical student was a mastectomy. As they were preparing the woman, who was under general anaesthetic for surgery, the all-male team of doctors joked extensively about the size of her breasts. After drawing the area to be removed on the unconscious woman’s skin, the surgeon grabbed a breast in each hand and jiggled them around while making ‘funny’ noises – to the amusement of all the other men present. The nurses turned a blind eye and I stood by horrified.

229

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.

228

There’s a male staff member who works in the same, very large building as myself. Each time I see him, he looks me up and down, his gaze lingering on my breasts. It’s disgusting. He seems to appear for no reason except to see me. He’ll compliment me, but it doesn’t feel genuine—it feels like he’s sexualising me.

227

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.

226

An IMT doctor shared pictures of him having sex with an F2, it made me uncomfortable but the other doctors in the doctors mess thought it was funny.

I go to work and I expect my colleagues to be professional. What happened made me as a female feel scared and devalued. I imagine it was a hundred times worse for the F2 female who was publically humiliated.

225

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.

224

I was sexually harassed by an ex-colleague at a surgical conference.

I was a still a registrar, he was now a consultant working elsewhere. We had never been close, just polite to each other at work. The experience scared me and I completely froze as it happened. I believe he waited until I was alone. He had already said goodbye to the group and left the hotel as he was staying elsewhere.

Once other members of the team had returned to their rooms he suddenly reappeared. He pressed himself up against me, his whole body, put his hands around the back of my head and held his face nose to nose with mine. I couldn’t move, I felt trapped. His hands were on my face and body for a prolonged period while he propositioned me. I was married with young children, as was he, which he knew. It was completely unwanted and uninvited.

I’m small, it was physically intimidating and I was scared.

The following day he got my number from another colleague and messaged me to say sorry ‘if anything was excessive’ and thanked me ‘for stopping him’. When I returned to work I confided in a female consultant who I trust and respect. I was still very shaken and had been experiencing nightmares. We both cried.

Another male surgical consultant, who had been also been at the conference, made a big show of telling everyone in theatre that he hadn’t initially recognised me at the conference and assumed I ‘must be someone’s wife’. I had been working as an anaesthetist with that surgical team for eight months by this point. I knew he was friends with the other consultant, the ex-colleague, and mentioned his name multiple times that day.

When he had finished operating he ran his hands slowly down my back, from my shoulder blade to the small of my back. We were not friends. He had never touched me before. He tried to do this on two or three further occasions before I completed my fellowship. I won’t be applying for a consultant post at that hospital, despite loving the anaesthetic team. I still feel cold when I hear the ex-colleague’s name and feel ashamed – that I froze, didn’t fight him off, didn’t report him.

I still fear not being believed, that his actions would be explained away or that the impact it had on me would be minimised.

223

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.

222

I had moved to a new area for the job. First time living on my own. Recently separated from my long term partner.

I worked directly with a male nurse lead on ADHD assessment and treatment. I was in post for 12 months. He was married and about 15 years my senior, so at first I assumed he was just trying to help me settle in, to welcome me to the team. There was an insidious onset of what started as flattery and developed into full stalking and sexual harassment.

I would enter my room in the morning and he would appear, he would always comment on my clothes, mainly my underwear, for example “what colour bra are you wearing” or else things like, “what are you eating, I wish it was me”. He sent emails with sexual content in them, “jokes” – to my work email – every morning. He constantly asked me about who I was dating. He would try and find ways to touch me, to corner me in rooms, to brush against me. One time he came into my room and picked up my boot (I had walked to work in boots and changed into shoes for work), he sniffed the boot and said “is this the closest I am going to get to you”.

I started to wear baggy clothes, I died my hair, I stopped going to common work areas I knew he might be in. A few colleagues had tried to help, to warn me, to tell him to back off. I started to repeat to his face “you are harassing me” and he would laugh and mock me, as if it was in my head, or my problem. Unlike most of the staff, I lived close to work, as I was living on my own and house prices were cheap, but everyone knew where I lived.

He once drove to my house, parked up and sat outside my house for several hours. The following day to this I phoned in sick and went to my mums house for a week. After confiding in my family, I kept a diary of events and I went to our line manager, the head of CAMHS. She was a consultant who was in her last year of work before retiring. She told me that they knew about his behaviour but that they had grown to accept it. That he was just like this, especially with certain roles he worked with over the years. She told me, a complaint had been made before so if I was to make a formal complaint then he would lose his job, and was that something I wanted to do? I handed over my evidence and said it was for them to decide. I left my job. Nothing happened. I feel sick with myself for allowing this to happen. I consider myself to be a strong, confident and independent female. If this happened to a friend, I would be all over it, giving them the advice they needed to hear.

But it happened to me and I still work in the area and I am fearful that one day I might bump into him.

221

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.

220

There are unfortunately a lot of instances of sexist remarks, but the worst sexist episode I’ve experienced was as an SHO on a ward round with a male registrar and male consultant. I was using the computer on wheels, and at every patient we stopped at, when the computerised notes were being looked at the registrar would move forwards until their crotch was pressed against my bottom. I don’t know if the consultant noticed or not (I suspect not, because it was at times they were also looking at the screen). I did muster up the courage to talk to the registrar at the end of the day and say in a very awkward way that they hadn’t left enough personal space for me and could they do so in future. They didn’t apologise but told me they weren’t aware. They avoided talking, looking at or coming anywhere near me for the rest of the placement, which in some ways I was grateful for as I felt very awkward round them but also meant that I lost the support of my immediate senior as they were the main ward registrar, and was left to figure things out for myself. With the benefit of hindsight I wish I had reported it but felt too awkward and was afraid I couldn’t prove anything to the almost exclusively male consultants in the department.

219

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.

218

Many years ago when I was a young nurse I got into the lift on a night shift at 3am transferring a sick patient. The porter I was with pushed himself up against me from behind, he had an erection and then he slapped me on my bum. I was 29 . I ran back to the ward terrified, the nurse in charge told me to forget about it and not to draw trouble on myself. I reported it the following day and had a meeting with the head of nursing, matron and my then manager. All three of them convinced me not take it any further, not to get the police involved,I was getting married the following month and did I really want all that hassle. Nothing was done about it,in fact the following shift he was back on the ward and I was expected to just get on with it and help him with my patients . A colleague of mine was furious and wrote an email to his boss, the porter was suspended on full pay for a week and wrote me a half hearted one sentence apology and that was it. Looking back now I feel so stupid that I didn’t stand up for myself or demand more