NHS Scotland: call bearded trans staff ‘women’

It seems that NHS Scotland still hasn’t learned the lessons from the Sandie Peggie furore. Now it turns out that a ‘cultural humility’ training module for healthcare workers produced in December 2023 told them to call bearded trans staff ‘women’ – and even suggested gender-neutral toilets should be introduced in care homes. With over 700,000 patients stuck on Scottish waiting lists, it’s not like hard-pressed NHS staff don’t have more pressing issues to contend with…

The Scottish NHS Cultural Humility training module puts forward one situation in which ‘Lucy’ is a male-to-female trans nurse who has not formally changed their name from Lee. The healthcare worker is described as ‘still producing facial hair which is exposed’ and adds that other staff feel uncomfortable correcting patients when they use male pronouns to reference the nurse. The solution? Staff are told that ‘they have a duty (under equality law) to use the correct name and pronouns for Lucy’.