Quote from: jaybutterfly on August 13, 2018, 12:34:50 AM
I got a call about the doctor I saw from the services. It's been investigated and they asked me if I want to make a formal complaint. Its been two weeks now, I haven't done because I don't want to turn this into something I feel could drag out long term, but given I have no physical proof of comments made, a part of me from my anxiety/depression side wonders if I'm liable to any backlash or retaliation for raising my upset and the comments that were made in the form of some kind of legal pathway like a lawsuit?
I'm in USA, not UK, so there's a lot about NHS Gender Services I don't understand. But it seems to me that you SHOULD file a formal complaint.
In most complaint systems I'm familiar with, one of the things you do is to specify what you are seeking in resolution of your complaint. The obvious one here is that you don't want THIS doctor to have anything further to do with your case. My guess is that if you file the formal complaint and specify that as your desired resolution, that's how it will turn out.
I think it's also valuable in a larger sense to put this doctor's comments on a formal record. The dialogue you related in your earlier post indicates this doctor either doesn't belong in Gender Services or, at the very least, he needs a lot of retraining.
Don't worry about the fact that you can't "prove" what he said. YOUR testimony is evidence. If he denies it, he denies it. But even the fact that he HAS to deny it will make him less likely to make similar remarks to another person in the future. (As he gets ready to pop off with some offensive remark to his next patient, a little bell will ring in his head and he will think "Maybe I'd better not say that! Last time I said that, the patient filed a complaint against me!") And that's progress.
Here's another reason not to worry about "proving" what he said. I highly doubt that this doctor has never done anything like this before. Most likely, he has made similar remarks to lots of patients. It may very well be that there are already earlier formal or informal complaints about him. Or that there WILL BE later complaints. Even though there's no audio recordings of the conversations, if different people, unrelated to each other, report the same type of behavior, that's VERY persuasive evidence.
Here's the bottom line. NHS was established to serve the health needs of the people of the UK. UK staff ultimately works for YOU. You shouldn't have to put up with being abused or belittled in seeking appropriate healthcare services.