England’s patient safety commissioner, Henrietta Hughes, has warned that NHS patients raising concerns are too often “gaslighted”, “fobbed off” or dismissed as “difficult women”.
“It shows a very dismissive and very old fashioned, patronising attitude to patients who have identified problems and need to have their voices heard,” she said.
Here are some examples of where women sounding the alarm were ignored.
Contaminated blood
Women infected with hepatitis C after being given infected blood during childbirth described how they were “gaslit” by doctors as they fought to seek help for symptoms linked to the virus.
Many were told they were suffering from conditions including depression, allergies or irritable bowel syndrome.
Doctors thought many women were alcoholics and refused to believe them when they said they had stopped drinking as their liver problems persisted.
Many women waited decades before they were finally diagnosed with hepatitis C and the delay has led to serious and ongoing health issues.
Charities said these women were “let down twice” – first when they were given contaminated blood transfusions and again when they tried to seek help for symptoms.
Birth trauma
One woman who repeatedly flagged to NHS staff that she was in extreme pain for the last few weeks of her pregnancy had “anxious mother” recorded on her notes, a parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma was told. In fact, she was bleeding internally as a result of tissue tearing behind her uterus.
Another had to chase her hospital to schedule a scan, including 44 calls in one day, after her bump height dropped. Had she been given a scan, as recommended in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) guidelines, it would have found her baby was experiencing growth restriction. The baby died during labour.
One mother told the inquiry she had expressed concerns that her baby was looking yellow but the midwife told her he was fine. “She wrote in my notes that I was an overly anxious mother and my baby was not jaundiced.”
Only after her husband intervened did a doctor confirm their baby was jaundiced. “The next day the page written by the midwife had been torn out,” the mother told the inquiry.
Mental health symptoms or complaints after a traumatic birth were often ignored or dismissed, the inquiry heard.
Cancer
A woman was “fobbed off” by her doctors, who failed to diagnose her colon cancer for a year, an investigation by the parliamentary and health service ombudsman (PHSO) found last year.
Charlie Puplett, 45, expressed concern at her GP surgery in Yeovil, Somerset, about unexplained weight loss, lack of appetite and a change in bowel habits. But the surgery did not test her for colon cancer – with one doctor suggesting she had anorexia and was “in denial”, she said.
She was not diagnosed until almost a year later when she was taken to hospital after vomiting blood. Puplett’s experience was detailed in an investigation by the PHSO, which found that her symptoms should have been “red flags” leading to urgent testing within two weeks. It said she had been “failed” by her doctors.
As a result of Puplett’s delayed treatment, she required an emergency operation to two-thirds of her colon and had a temporary colostomy bag.
Reproductive health
TV stars Vicky Pattison and Naga Munchetty revealed how they were told to “suck it up” as they sought help for menstrual and gynaecological issues.
Both women said they ended up going private after failing to get the care they needed on the NHS.
Giving evidence to the women and equalities committee last year, Pattison, who came to fame on the reality show Geordie Shore, told MPs she had been made to feel “stupid and ashamed”.
She was eventually diagnosed with pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) but not before doctors had put her extreme symptoms in her late 20s, including “crippling anxiety”, insomnia and fatigue, down to pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS).
Pattison said: “I was always told exactly the same thing: ‘This is PMS. This is what women go through. Every other woman in the world is dealing with this.’”
She decided to go private “after feeling ignored and invalidated by the NHS” and said she “could’ve kicked myself for taking so long” as she was immediately diagnosed with PMDD.
The broadcaster and journalist Munchetty, who has been diagnosed with adenomyosis, said her pain was so intense that her husband called an ambulance.
She said she had been told since she was about 15 “just to ‘suck it up’ and ‘you’re normal’ and ‘everyone goes through this’, and especially told by male doctors who’ve never experienced a period and then by female doctors who hadn’t experienced period pain”.
Munchetty added: “No woman says she’s in pain unless she is in real pain. No woman says she is anxious unless she is really anxious. No woman wants to appear weak or appear incapable until she really is, until she can’t cope any more. And it shouldn’t be that way.”
