A male student nurse who quit the profession because hospital bosses banned him from performing "intimate procedures" on female patients today won a landmark sex case.
Andrew Moyhing, 29, was awarded £750 compensation after winning his case against Barts and the London NHS trust, but he waived the award saying he only wanted to establish a principle.
Mr Moyhing, who now sells financial services, successfully challenged an earlier employment tribunal ruling, which found it was acceptable for the trust to have a different policy for male nurses than for female nurses when intimate procedures were carried out on patients.
He told the employment appeal tribunal that his training was undermined because he was only allowed to perform many procedures on male patients while female colleagues were taught how to treat both sexes.
For example, the former student nurse was told that a female member of staff would have to chaperone him while he carried out an electrocardiogram, which records the electrical activity of the heart, because one or both of the patient's breasts might be exposed.
Mr Justice Patrick Elias ruled that the chaperoning policy, which the trust said was a safeguard against assaults on female patients and false accusations against male nurses, was unlawful.
"Sex discrimination is wrong, whether it is directed at women or men," said Jenny Watson, chairwoman of the Equal Opportunities Commission, which supported the case.
"The employment appeal tribunal was right to find that it was not acceptable to have a chaperoning policy based on lazy stereotyping about the risks to patients and assumptions that all men are sexual predators, and this judgement should help to ensure that such prejudices become a thing of the past.
"This type of discrimination against men based on misconceptions about their behaviour does nothing to help ensure patient safety."
Last year the Commission analysed gender inequalities in NHS and found that the workforce remains highly segregated. It found more than 90% of nurses were female and 98.8% of midwives were female, while 75% of chief executives were male and only 10% cent of surgeons are female.
Mr Moyhing said he hoped the ruling would encourage more men to become or remain nurses.
"Male nurses are still seen as a bit of an oddity simply because there are so many more women in the profession than men, despite the fact that so many doctors are male," Mr Moyhing said.
"But I believe that ultimately, if male students are treated more equally, those such as myself who abandoned nursing as a career will stay on and the numbers will start to equalise."
Under Royal College of Nursing guidelines, nurses must first explain how and why an examination is carried out and then ask the patient's permission. If the patient objects the examination must be stopped immediately.
Patients of either sex undergoing intimate examinations must always be offered a chaperon and given privacy to undress and dress.
NHS guidelines do not specify that different procedures should be in place for male and female nurses.
