United Kingdom changes rules for the admission of transgender patients

O  British National Health Service (NHS) has new guidelines on the hospitalization of transgender patients: from now on, these patients should be placed in hospital wards according to the gender with which they were born and not with the type with which they identify themselves.

The new instructions, published by the NHS this Thursday, mean that UK hospitals should not designate trans women to female wards or trans men to male wards, with “alternative arrangements” to be made only if this is not “clinically appropriate”.

So far, transgender patients could be in a single-sex wing based on the gender they identified with.

Although the new report states that all patients “must be treated with respect, dignity, compassion and care”, the same determines that “trans and other persons with the protected characteristic of gender redesignation should be welcomed according to their biological sex”.

The text adds that “when the clinical needs and accommodation requirements for same-sex couples cannot be met simultaneously, the clinical needs will have priority”.

This orientation recognizes that cases where a transgender patient is placed in a ward according to their gender identity will likely become “rare”.

The NHS mental, emergency and emergency health services, as well as NHS-funded patients in private clinics, are affected by the new guidelines, but emergency departments, emergency treatment centers and pediatric services are not.

Employees of the British National Health Service who work in hospitals and offices have already been informed that facilities segregated by sex, such as clothing and bathrooms, should be used according to the biological gender.

In institutions with predominantly single-sex facilities, the recommendation is to consider whether alternatives, such as “individual or mixed facilities with single locked rooms, can be made available to allow access to facilities in a way that respects privacy and dignity and supports the inclusion of all employees”.

The update of the guidelines appears just over two months after the entry into force of the more comprehensive recommendations on exclusive spaces for a single sex, drawn up by the United Kingdom Human Rights Protection Body, and about a year and a half after the historic Supreme Court decision defining gender as the sex attributed at birth.