The NHS fails women and it’s all my fault
Copperfield takes aim at the DHSC’s messaging with the release of the women’s health strategy, which says that women are being ‘gaslit’ by doctors
If there really is a zero-tolerance policy to violence in all its forms in the NHS, then I’d like to call out Wes Streeting and the DHSC comms team. Because I’m reeling from verbal abuse.
As the NHS’s women’s health strategy is relaunched, Wes is quoted as saying the NHS is ‘failing women’, who are ‘gaslit’ by doctors. Apparently, the system is rife with medical misogyny, and there’s going to be a pilot giving women the power to withhold payment for services if they have a poor experience.
Look, there’s banging a drum and there’s banging us over the head with a club. And if your GCS isn’t plummeting already, it will when I quote the press release. Women are ‘ignored’, their symptoms are ‘dismissed’ as ‘overreaction’, the system is ‘failing women’. But don’t fret, because the renewed strategy will ‘tackle the issues women face every day’, ensure no woman is ‘fighting to be heard’ and ‘finally offer appropriate pain relief’.
Yes, OK, enough, I confess. I’m a doctor and I hate women! I think they’re trivial, girly, emotionally incontinent, demanding pain-exaggerators who deserve to be ignored but wouldn’t notice anyway because they’re too busy watching ‘The Other Bennett Sister’.
Except, obviously, I don’t believe that at all. It’s nonsense, just like the tone of the strategy. Emotive quotes make good clickbait but do not paint a picture I recognise in the NHS. The hysterical tone clouds the few reasonable points it does make, and the implication of ingrained misogyny is ridiculous and offensive. Then again, I’m a man, so what the f**k do I know?
Well, I’ll tell you what I do know. Disaffection about delays, undermanagement of pain of all types, and voices not being heard could be applied to just about any patient group in the NHS. I have men stuck with catheters and no urology appointment in sight. Children and adolescents with anxiety and stress treated with leaflets and links. Patients of all genders with likely IBD anticipating a one year wait. Elderly who can’t see or walk while they linger endlessly on waiting lists for cataract or hip surgery.
I could go on, and so could you. It’s not just women suffering, it’s everyone. In each case, their grief is articulated by a quiet grumble or a little weep in the consulting room rather than a politician banging self-righteously on a table. In maybe just 0.1%, the causes are Jurassic attitudes or callous professionals. The other 99.9%? Systemic NHS problems.
So Wes, who is gaslighting who?
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex
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READERS' COMMENTS [13]
Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
Point brilliantly articulated as usual. And the search for curative treatment for Endometriosis goes on.
Daily Lies. Breaking news…
“Essex GP admits NHS fails women…and it’s all His fault!!!”
A Dr Copperfield, of the Slacker Practice in Essex, admitted today that he alone was to blame for all the misery heaped on women by the NHS.
In between his busy meetings, The Daily Lies managed to approach Mr Streeting for his comments on this shocking disclosure.
“Well, there you have it, as I said it’s nothing to do with us. Our Labour government’s NHS policies and strategies have been vindicated. As soon as this GP has been dealt with, women’s services throughout the wonderful NHS will be back to their usual world-beating levels.”
Well, I am pleased someone has stood up and accepted responsibility for this at last. Successive Governments for decades have been trying to get GPs to take responsibility for everything the Government does, and now at last one has done so.
Now, who else should be included in this ‘responsibility-accepting’ frenzy?
Can someone please advise where the IBD waiting list is only ONE year? I have several patients need to be seen….
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?”.
Also, it is about time that we publicised the fact the Government will not all us to do tests that accurately diagnose perimenopause.
Wes is quoted as saying the NHS is ‘failing women’, and successive Health secretary’s have failed the whole country. Both easy to say and one is true.
Please can we have the Hungarian guy, he has 2 qualities Wes totally lacks, he was greatly respected as effective innovator in healthcare throughout his career and he can dance!
Dear Wesley
I’m so happy about your new found interest in women’s issues. So, on behalf of women everywhere, can I ask what your patriarchal government’s done on action on domestic abuse, or the gender pay gap, or the economic value of unpaid care work overwhelmingly done by women, and about under-representation of women on company boards and in decision-making, or about education pushing girls into caregiving instead of careers, and about structural gender inequality? Is all that also doctors’ fault?
See you for Sunday lunch and wear your big boy pants.
Yours mumly
Mrs Corrina Streeting
Wes is a moron, and frequently ‘gaslights’ the profession.
On the subject of women being underserved, which by Wes is taken as fact, I’d observe that as a group it is adult men who might feel relatively short changed in terms of health service attention.
As a rough guide 2/3 of my appointments with adults as a male GP are with women, and for my female colleagues each clinic often exceeds 75% women patients.
If we’re going to have sex-based outcry, who will bemoan the relatively fewer healthcare appointments used to assess and treat male adults vs female adults?
Women failed by society that tells them strawberry matcha latte from Starbucks will give them more energy and then get gaslit when their doctor files their results “normal no action”
Hi Wes
I agree with you in one regard.
There’s definitely some gaslighting going on.
And if you should happen upon Nye Bevan’s boots kindly don’t lick them as I think many would find that offensive.
There are many demands on our ‘reactivity,’ which are largely Nature’s demands Infections, cancer and atherosclerosis for example. Please consider Rainfall, – we all have to keep up or the land will flood. Illness, – we can tolerate less than 100% reactivity, – only certain illnesses do flood the country. My point is that in the 1970’s we really tried hard to keep up with Nature. We don’t try to do that any more.
I detest Streeting and was ready to rant about his comms on this but I read in the independent the source for this is the Royal college of gynaecologists.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/womens-health-strategy-nhs-waiting-list-wes-streeting-b2957320.html
Really unhelpful. Children’s mental health is one of worst areas of the NHS provision, patients across the board, man, woman and child are having unacceptable waiting times due to successive governments failures and the present government making some of the worst decisions, cutting hospital trust funding while pouring public money into routine electives is like reverse triage, least acute prioritised over most acute.
I expected this crap from politicians but not from doctors. The lead gynaecologist should take a long hard look at herself. She is not helping female patients by seeding stories of misogyny that are not true. AS a matter of fact GPs provide the majority of routine women’s health care; HRT, contraception, dysmenorhea, menorhagia and the diagnostic pathways for endometriosis are unreliable and tricky; laparoscopy has significant risks and is inaccurate. Many of the treatments for endometriosis can be started by GPs ie COC, as the mainstay of treatment is suppression of the hormone cycle. Maybe instead of pursuing divisive headline soundbites, the lead for the royal college of gynaecology should applaud GPs for providing most of the less acute gyne care and lobby for more funding for general practice as we do most of the NHS work for our pittance of patient funding. No, I can’t see that happening either.
‘Dr Alison Wright, president of the Royal College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians (RCOG), warned that women’s health conditions are often prioritised differently to men’s, with chronic and debilitating conditions such as endometriosis not being given the attention they deserve.
She also warned that A&E was being clogged up with women who need emergency treatment because they are waiting too long for routine procedures.’