NHS charter to stress biological sex when placing patients in wards

Transgender women should not be put on single-sex female NHS wards, the government is proposing.

The measure is part of a raft of changes to the NHS Constitution for England, the charter of rights for patients.

The proposals stress the importance of biological sex for the first time when it comes to same-sex accommodation and intimate care. In both cases, the rights are available only where possible. For example, same-sex accommodation rights, which have existed for years, can and are breached where there is a clinically urgent need to admit and treat a patient and do not extend to areas such as critical care or accident and emergency.

The guidance also means that trans men should not be housed on single-sex male wards.

Under the proposals:

• transgender people, whose gender identity differs from their biological sex, may be provided single rooms, where appropriate
• patients will have the right to request a person of the same biological sex delivers any intimate care

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said it was about making it clear that "sex matters." She said, "We want to make it abundantly clear that if a patient wants same-sex care, they should have access to it wherever reasonably possible. By putting this in the NHS Constitution, we're highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients, to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer to all."

Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: "Rights on paper are worthless unless they are delivered in practice. "The NHS constitution already pledges that no patient will have to share an overnight ward with patients of the opposite sex, but that is not the case for too many patients."

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Source: BBC News, 30 April 2024