Letter to PALS

[ailbhe]

Hi,

While at my pre-op today for a gynaecological issue I saw a notice up asking that staff remind women to shave before surgery. I asked the nurse if I should shave, and she said no, but that the consultant preferred "ladies" to "tidy the garden."

The consultant's aesthetic preferences are not a patient's concern, and should never be made a patient's concern, and if there is no surgical need - no incision within the hairline, etc - then there is no medical requirement to depilate. Genital exposure is personal enough without bringing the surgeon's personal aesthetic preferences into it.

I have a personal preference for a gynaecologist who can cope with normal adult female anatomy.

A.

Comments

[clanwilliam]

WTF? I'd send a formal complaint about that (edited to add: to the GMC). Utterly unprofessional and rather threatening. I could understand a "please trim" from the POV of making things easier for the surgeon in a practical sense, but the rest?