Gender reassignment operation delayed because of poor communication

What happened

Mr S, who was born a female, identified throughout his life as a male. He had begun the gender reassignment process, and the next step in the process involved the removal of his female reproduction organs. As Mr S was anxious to have the operation as soon as possible, for personal as well as medical reasons, his GP referred him to a private hospital run by BMI Healthcare to have this carried out on the NHS. The GP chose this hospital specifically because the consultant gynaecologist was able to carry out the procedure laparoscopically (through keyhole surgery), and also to reduce the waiting time for surgery.

The hospital then had to change the consultant surgeon, and when Mr S saw a second consultant surgeon, they only had a brief discussion about the operation.

Mr S found out that the second surgeon was not able to carry out the procedure by keyhole surgery, and that the surgeon would have to make an open incision to perform Mr S's operation. The surgeon agreed to see if he could find another surgeon who could do the procedure by keyhole surgery, but did not get back to Mr S on this.

As Mr S was keen to proceed with the gender reassignment process (which had begun three years previously), and was worried about delays to the operation, he agreed to let the second surgeon do the operation. On the day of the operation, when the surgeon went to get Mr S's consent for the procedure, it became clear that he would not be able to fully remove all of Mr S's female reproductive system, and so the operation was cancelled.

Mr S went on to have the full procedure done elsewhere some months later. However, he said he had to put his life on hold while waiting for the operation and the full process to be completed, and this caused him additional anxiety.

What we found

We partly upheld the complaint. There was poor communication between the first surgeon, the second surgeon and Mr S, and not all the specific details that Mr S discussed with them were recorded in his notes. This meant that when the operation was due to take place, it became clear that Mr S expected some specific procedures would be done which the second surgeon did not have the competency to do. Mr S had also made attempts to contact the second surgeon between his consultation with him and the day of the operation, but this was unsuccessful.

We found failings in communication between both surgeons and the patient, and we did not think that the hospital had taken adequate steps to make sure that these failings did not recur.

Putting it right

The hospital wrote to Mr S to apologise for the failings we identified, and improved the communication issues we highlighted.