Gender Dysphoria: Health Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that robust and consistent informed consent processes are applied in the provision of adult NHS gender identity services.
Answered by Karin Smyth
NHS England's national service specification for adult gender services requires clinicians to make all efforts to ensure that individuals are aware of the longer-term consequences of the interventions offered to them. The service specification describes that the process of obtaining informed consent is an important aspect of ethical assessment and intervention, including the emotional, social, and factual issues, so as to enable the individual to make informed decisions about the treatment options, benefits, material risks, and the alternatives to the treatments proposed, including the option of having no treatment. Individuals must be given sufficient time to reflect on the clinical advice and the potential treatment options before deciding what is best for them.
Further, in response to the findings of the Operational and delivery review of NHS adult gender dysphoria clinics in England, chaired by David Levy, a national comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment framework is being developed to ensure each patient’s needs are identified, formulated, and interventions are agreed.
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