Barts Health Equality and Human Rights Impact Assessment Report

www.brap.org.ukPatient experience/health inequalitiesKey experiences described by participants in the focus group are summarised andrecounted here:Positive/no experience of healthcare: a couple of people hadn’t really had to use Whipps Cross or their local GP and whenthey had, they’d had a generally positive experience Barts and the London has a specialist blood clinic for children – this is great because itmeans children don’t have to queue with adults (they can be very nervous, ‘hysterical’).Whipps Cross doesn’t have this facility somebody’s partner received fantastic treatment at Whipps Cross when she went in formeningitisDirect prejudice: one participant recounted that a nurse was physically taken aback when she remarkedthat she was a lesbian. The nurse was so shaken she was unable to finish the procedureshe was conducting properly. The patient felt “ashamed” and felt the experience to becompletely “unpleasant” one woman’s partner wasn’t allowed into the maternity unit when she was giving birthbecause staff didn’t recognise her as a ‘legitimate’ partner one participant went to his GP in relation to his dyspraxia and Asperger’s. On finding outthat he is gay, his doctor sent him for an MRI scan and said he shouldn’t be teaching a hospital refused to accept a patient’s same-sex partner as his next of kin. Staff therecontinually asked him for the details to fill in a form, despite him repeatedly giving hispartner’s information there is a local GP that refused to treat a lesbian patient after she came outHeterosexist policies/procedures: during a booking appointment [the first official check-up after pregnancy] a nurse wascompletely confused as to how to deal with a lesbian couple. In particular she wonderedaloud how to direct a standard question about domestic violence (standard procedurebeing to ask the man to leave) when one participant’s son had a biopsy, the hospital refused to accept her partner hadparental responsibility – which meant she couldn’t sign a particular form. The participantpointed out that at such moments, having arguments about rights is the last thing youwant generally, there appears to be an assumption of heterosexuality – most obviously in theway that, when partners are referred to, they’re gendered. That means the doctor/nursehas to be corrected to which the common response is surprise, which itself is offensiveand demeaning164