The Princess Grace hospital has been forced to apologise after cancelling a woman’s operation and later accusing her of discrimination when she requested care from a biological woman.
Former solicitor, Teresa Steele, alleges that delays to her treatment caused her to develop an abscess that nearly killed her.
Steele was due to have an operation in October last year at Princess Gate, a private hospital in central London that specialises in women’s health, but this was cancelled after Steele requested same sex care.
The former solicitor made the request after a transgender nurse unexpectedly walked into her pre-op examination room.
Due to an abscess that Steele later developed, her surgery could only take place in February this year and was only rescheduled after pressure from public outcry.
Steele told The Telegraph: “It is not a personal issue for me. Since my experience with HCA, I have been contacted by many women patients who are now too afraid to speak out.
“It is particularly distressing to hear from disabled women, including a young woman who is paralysed and has been forced by a private agency to accept intimate care from men under threat of her care being withdrawn.”
The former solicitor is using her own case as a platform to demand that HCA, one of the UK’s largest private healthcare companies, put in place protections for other patients.
Steele has confirmed that she is willing to waive legal action if the group enacts policy changes, which include enshrining the right of a patient to request care from medics of the same biological sex as them.
In her hospital admission forms, Steele had expressed preference for a single-sex bathroom, but a trans nurse entered her examination private room during her pre-op assessment on October 6.
After Steele complained, the hospital cancelled her October 10 operation due to not being able to guarantee same-sex care in the given notice period.
The Telegraph has reported seeing emails between staff stating that they “perceive the patient’s request and rationale as a discrimination on gender and sex against… hospital employees”.
The following evening, Maxine Estop Green, the hospital’s CEO, emailed Steele to declare: “We do not share your beliefs and are not able to adhere to your requests.”
Green later reneged on her position, admitted Steele’s privacy and dignity had been breached, and said she would like to “sincerely apologise” for “how unsettling this must have been”.
On the cancelled operation’s impact on her health, Steele said: “I was very traumatised and on the point of collapse following the cancellation.
“There was a sudden and observable deterioration in my health. An abscess that had not been visible on scans only a short time earlier had suddenly appeared.
“They endangered my life by cancelling that operation. I could have died of sepsis.”
A spokeswoman for The Princess Grace Hospital told The Telegraph: “The privacy and dignity of our patients is incredibly important, and we are in the final stages of reviewing our policy on this.
“We have invited Ms Steele, alongside others, to provide their views and insights to help inform these updates.
“We remain committed to always accommodating patient requests where we safely can do so. In rare circumstances, we may need to cancel or postpone a procedure to give us more time to ensure we can meet these requests.
“We would always do this prioritising patient safety and the urgency of their care and look to reschedule this as soon as we have been able to fully discuss their individual needs.”
https://www.gbnews.com/news/hospital-surgery-cancelled-princess-grace