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Updated guidance issued by the regulatory arm of nurses and midwives in the U.K. threatens disciplinary action against professionals who refuse to endorse transgenderism when interacting with gender-confused patients.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (UMC), which serves as the governing body and regulatory arm of these medical professionals in the U.K., recently issued updated guidance on practices that suggests nurses and midwives could be disciplined for rejecting gender ideology and refusing to call patients by names or pronouns that contradict their biological sex.
In November 2023, UMC published updated guidance on “Freedom of expression and Fitness to Practice.” Some examples provided in the guidance suggest that UMC would “take action” against professionals if their exercise of personal and religious beliefs regarding gender ideology results in a so-called impairment of their “fitness to practice.”
The guidance cites “a number of reported cases around protected beliefs and freedom of expression” as a prompt for updating the document and provided “examples based on real cases and set out the limited grounds on which we would consider taking action.”
After saying the NMC is not seeking “to regulate what professionals on our register say” while exercising their “protected beliefs,” the guidance threatens that the group “may need to take action if the way someone expresses their belief means [that] there is a risk to the public,” a “risk to public confidence in the profession” or the NMC must “act to maintain proper professional standards and conduct.”
Further driving the point home, the document contrasts a hypothetical scenario of a professional sharing protected religious views on homosexual “marriage,” which it says would be permitted, and he or she using unspecified “discriminatory language,” for which the professional would face discipline.
Similarly, the NMC says that attendance at “a lawful march or protest” against abortion is not subject to scrutiny, whereas alleged violence at such an event or providing so-called “unsafe unsolicited clinical advice” would be.
The guidance includes several detailed examples that would land a nurse or midwife in hot water, for example, if “a registered nurse deliberately misgenders [sic] a transgender [sic] person attending a diabetes clinic, despite that person repeatedly asking them to refer to them using the correct gender.”
Following a “formal complaint,” if the nurse stands by her actions as inspired by her religious convictions about sex and gender, the NMC would be “likely to take action” because “persistently and deliberately misgendering [sic] a trans [sic] person is contrary to the requirements of the Code to treat people with kindness and respect,” according to the guidelines.
The example concedes that “gender-critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act” but such legal grounds do not, according to the NMC, permit those dissenting from gender ideology to “misgender” gender-confused patients “with impunity.”
Another example proposes that a nursing professional repeatedly “makes comments” to a colleague about “accept[ing] the body they are in” and encouraging him or her to find mental health support to deal with the gender confusion. The scenario includes the use of unspecified jokes regarding “trans rights and transphobic slurs.”
This situation, too, would prompt “action” against the nurse because the professional has allegedly “targeted their colleague in a discriminatory and harassing manner.” NMC maintains that it would respond this way “even if” the professional “could demonstrate that the underlying beliefs that motivated their conduct are themselves protected.”
Gender ideology in the U.K. has received notable backlash from political figures and media personalities alike, even though the country has joined much of the western world in promoting the radical ideology to all ages. A new report revealed that the National Health Service (NHS) and its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), run by the notorious Tavistock Clinic, has seen nearly 400 children six years old and younger and over 70 who are aged four and younger.
Additionally, the U.K. Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (CAFCASS) has been criticized for inserting radical gender ideology into nearly all interactions with children in the realm of social work.
