Your Stories

I’m a student nurse but I also work on the bank as a HCA. One day on shift, I noticed a patients oxygen levels dropping. I wasn’t sure if they were receiving oxygen therapy, so I decided to clarify with the consultant. As I approached the consultant, he was speaking to an F1 and another bank HCA, who was also a med student. All three of them are males. When asking if the patient needed oxygen, they all sniggered and laughed, as well as making some comments under their breathe. I asked ‘what’s the joke?’, where none of them answered and continued to snigger. I’ve never felt so humiliated in front of three, male professionals. After reflecting on this, it felt like a sexist situation and as a consequence, I’m now wary of asking these simple questions. It turned out, this patient was quite unwell and ended up requiring oxygen therapy.

I work with a team with 3 managers. 2 middle managers and 1 senior manager. I am female ~ 60, and am one of the middle managers. The senior manager is male and late 40’s, the other middle manager is late 30’s and male. For the past year I have experienced exclusion as the norm – discussions happens between, and decisions are made by my two male colleagues together only.

When all 3 of us are meeting with the wider team, any views I express are immediately shot down by the senior manager and I feel regularly denigrated in front of the juniors. On the other hand, views expressed by my male colleague are immediately hailed as high value by the senior manager even when they are clearly totally ridiculous. At these meetings with Juniors, there is almost constant eye contact between my two male colleagues. I always leave those meetings feeling totally excluded, humiliated and feeling very down, wanting to quit. My male colleague, although much less qualified, experienced, and very much less productive than myself, is promoted highly around the Trust by the senior manager, while he seems to try to hide me, but inevitably my performance and productivity speaks loud on my behalf.

On a number of occasions I have received clear ageist comments from my male middle manager colleague. My request to have excess time worked back was refused by senior manager, although my male colleague takes time off for excess time worked, with no evidence of when the time was worked. I am a very experienced manager myself and there is no question that what I am experiencing is gender and age discrimination. I have not done anything about this up to now, because apart from these 2 male colleagues, I really like working at this Trust and I like it’s staff in general. It feels good to get this out there in this story, and undoubtedly there will come a point when my tolerance runs out and I will act.

Working in a very busy emergency department as one of the registrar doctors on a weekend shift. We were already holding on ambulances and only had one space left in resus. I went to review a patient on the back of an ambulance who was scoring a 7 on his News. He had an infective exacerbation of his COPD.

Immediately I felt a strange vibe from the male paramedic who had been looking after him in the ambulance. I was interrupted on several occasions while taking my history, he felt that the patient either needed resus, or should stay in the ambulance on a monitor instead of going onto the corridor when a space was made available. I explained that my plan was to do an ABG and ensure he hadn’t decompensated, but that if he hadn’t I would be happy for him to go on the corridor. This would mean we could start treatment and have him in an area we could keep an eye on him as a department.

I was getting push back already from the paramedic, so ensured my consultant agreed with my plan, which she did. I arrived back in the ambulance with the gas, which was fine. I was interrupted again by the paramedic asking to interpret the gas himself (I hadn’t released I needed to run ABGs passed my paramedic colleagues before). I explained I was happy for the patient to go on the corridor, and that I would start treatment there and refer him to the medics. Again, I was interrupted by the paramedics explaining to the wife and patient that we would have to wait for bloods and CXR to then decide if he would be admitted (I hadn’t realised that it was the paramedics who decided who was being admitted!).

I had to explain that given he was on oxygen, even if all the tests come back negative I would be keeping him in. I then went to prescribe, refer etc. in our office. By the time I came back to the corridor I found that the paramedic had taken the patient in, told the senior nurse on the corridor that this was a standby who needed to go into resus. He had dumped the patient in the last space in resus and left the department, completely undermining everything that I had said and done.

I escalated to both consultants on shift who were angry on my behalf and escalated it to the paramedic in charge. I do feel quite strongly that if I was a male doctor, instead of a blond, young, female doctor, this would not have happened.

During an exit interview with 2 senior staff and another foundation trainee the conversation turned to what we would be doing next. I said that I was keen to explore research and asked for any insight or advice. Neither of the staff had any insight and the most senior suggested that I shouldn’t worry as females tended to work pt in general practice and raise children with the other half.

Years later, and after several years of PG training, I met with a surgeon who I thought could be a potential research supervisor during my MSc. After giving me the up and down look we proceeded to have a conversation that involved the following questions: was I single, what was my living situation, what age was I, could I afford to do a PhD… being 31 at the time he suggested that even though I was currently a “free bird” I might not be a good candidate, despite having no insight into my previous qualifications.

I worked at a hospital. During the induction address the person giving the address suggested that there were many places to have sex in the hospital. That was an unwanted joke. That was sexual harassment. On returning to my work station a work colleague who I had previously not even noticed flirted with me. Which was a direct result of the suggestive comments made in the induction. There was no one to tell.

In my first year of medical school a student I knew held me down after a night out and attempted to rape me but was interrupted by another flat mate who pulled him off me. The attitude of both of them was we’d all been drinking and I shouldn’t have gone back to their flat so it was best not to say anything more.

The next year I was living in a mixed house share. One evening I was asleep in bed and woke to hear 2 house mates come home with another 2 medical students. They were talking loudly and I heard one of them say “go up and see”. One of them came up the stairs, walked into my bedroom and took his clothes off before climbing into bed with me. I froze and pretended to be sleep but despite this he pressed his penis into my bottom and started rubbing himself against me whilst touching my breasts. He eventually got up and went back downstairs where they all started laughing.

When I was 20 I went to a gynae clinic with dysmenorrhoea and saw a male gynae Spr. Following a speculum examination he raped me with his hand bunched in a fist. There was a nurse observing and she just turned away. When he’d finished he held his hand up to me to show me that I was bleeding and told me “look what you made me do”. The nurse went and got a sanitary pad for me to wear to go home. It was painful sitting for the rest of the day. I told a friend who told me it wasn’t ’real rape’ and told me to forget about it. I reported it to the trust a year later who promised to investigate but their response was that he had used a poor examination technique and had now moved to another trust so could not be contacted. The nurse apparently said she was not aware of anything having been wrong whilst she was chaperone.

During my clinical skills training I was in a break out group of 6 students practising female pelvic examinations on mannequins. There were 4 men in the group and throughout the session they proceeded to talk about what sexual acts they would do if it was a real person. At the point where one student fisted the model I walked out of the room. I reported the incident to our clinical tutor (and disclosed my experience in the gynae clinic to her) but this didn’t lead to any discussion with us as a group of medical students about what was appropriate behaviour.

These all happened over 20 years ago and I can picture them like they were yesterday.

The words “she needs a sh*g” said about me in front of everyone after a professional disagreement with a more senior male nurse, even worse it was said in front of other senior nursing staff who all put their heads down. Biggest regret of my life not reporting it, I was newly qualified at the time. I still think about it filled with anger.

I no longer work in this place.