I bought my surgeon a little flashlight so he didn’t have to use his cellphone

My surgeons assistant has been doing my follow ups . They have a mobile lamp plugged up & she uses a professional camera for progress pics . I would feel weird if she pulled her cell phone out 🥴

You did good questioning it. Well done.

You were in a very vulnerable situation. What they did is not right or acceptable, i have been in a similar position and also have an ongoing complaint.

It's not your fault if you feel violated and they need to be held to account.

Please try to stay strong and look at the positive parts. Don't let the bad things define your existence going forward

Sorry i can't be more help but I'm getting over it even though it's much more difficult than it should be 3 years post op.

You will recover and feel much better at some point. EMDR helped me a lot after being assaulted by a surgeon on more than one occasion.

Assuming you don’t need them anymore, name and shame.

Generally you can refuse consent to medical procedures and doctors have to accept it. What country is this?

That sucks. I doubt you will get any kind of response that makes you feel better, even if it were illegal. The hospital knows you will have to hire a lawyer, and then face a potentially huge legal bill if you lose. It costs them nothing to ignore you. Again, sucks.

How the f is there not a flashlight that is wiped down between patients if that is needed for exams? The thing is that cell phones are notoriously disgusting, so if a surgeon busted it out to examine me I would say, "Did you sterilize that thing after using it in the bathroom?" Keep your fecal phone away from my wounds, bro.

Edit to add: I am the person who has no shame in asking a nurse, physician, etc for them to put on new gloves if they do something gross, and then try to touch me. A dental tech used her gloved hand to push other USED gloves down into the trash; she was shocked when I asked her to put on new gloves after what I saw, but she knew she f'd up and put on new gloves.

How were you ignored? Did you tell them no and they forced you? Cause that's assault.

i'm very sorry to see the disgusting comments you are receiving that normalise this and dismiss the violation of your consent. i would not have felt comfortable with a phone being used to examine my genitalia and a request for them to use an alternative device is perfectly reasonable.

I’m so sorry that happened to you. Doctors (definitely not all) can take an extraordinarily inhumane approach to their patients. Simply because they quarantine the emotional aspect of your ’being’ in favour of a mechanical perspective to your biology — entirely inexcusably, no question about that. The resulting trauma (because doctors are also frequently in denial about the relationship between mental and physical health (i.e. you don’t have a heart problem! you’re just anxious now let me get to my next patient, or you’re making up your severe period pain, endometriosis is a myth!) is dismissed as ‘made up’ or just another example of a ‘difficult patient’. Too many examples to list where doctors create this pain and this problem because of their thoughtlessness and sometimes worst, their transphobia.

In your case, it seems (from what limited understanding I have) they’ve approached you without regard to the wholeness of your person and lacking any empathy (let alone any ‘bed-side manner’), have traumatised you (unintentionally or otherwise, it’s not relevant) They traumatised you.

I firmly doubt they even discussed the matter afterwards beyond language analogous to comparing the differences between two fan belts in a car’s radiator, but they hurt you that’s for sure and they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. A battle hardened nurse with hospital authority should give them a good whipping for that. Furthermore, compassionate healthcare ’culture’ can sometimes be comparable to shitty corporate culture where employees just don‘t give a shit enough to take one extra moment to accommodate what can be the difference between you feeling very cared for and you horribly traumatised. Again, I’m so sorry this happened to you. You deserve much better care.

I had my surgeon do an inspection in their exam room. She has used her cell phone light. I am sorry you feel violated. But I had no problem with it.

I don’t work in an area with genital exams are common but as a nurse I’ve never seen a doctor use anything but their cell phone flashlight to do exams. (Usually eyes for neuro)

But yeah doing things without consent is illegal.

I don’t understand the problem with cellphone flashlights ?

I'm sorry that happened to you.

I can see better when using my phone light, and you can pinpoint it exactly where you need. Not for medical, for normal life.

That being said, ffs use a torch and most important explain what you're doing and get consent

I'm sorry that happened... it should never be done.

Where I worked (elder care facility), personal phones were forbidden to be used except on breaks, and only in the breakroom. Most of the nurses (90%, but not the trainees) had the work cell phones. Pictures could be taken, with consent, for forwarding to the doctor.

(some of the patients were non-communicative, but even then we'd tell them that we were taking a picture, why we were taking it, and what would be done with the picture).

So they should have there followed similar protocol: using hospital phones, explain why they need to take the picture and what they will do with it, and then get consent.

(If I was licensed in Michigan, which would be pointless as I left the US after passing the bar exam, I'd write a supporting letter to the hospital. But as an unregistered lawyer, they wouldn't be impressed very much...)

But I would find if there's a group that can take this pro-bono or on contingency. Shouldn't be hard as the hospital should back down if they got a letter from a firm that puts the same fear into their hearts as Trump had before meeting Kamala :P

You weren’t violated. It wasn’t abuse. Sorry your doc doesn’t carry a frigging mag light. Cell phone flashlights are very intense directional light and very true to color. There’s nothing wrong with it.

As a trans NP…I don’t see the issue with this.

On one hand I can understand why you might feel uncomfortable with the cellphone flashlight. “Maybe it’s a photo or recording occurring.” But at the same time, this is the person you’ve chosen to perform such an intimate procedure that if you don’t trust them enough to believe that they’re genuinely just examining your genitals and not snapping illicit photos for self-gratification, then do you really want them performing your procedure to begin with?

Yes, it’s terrible to do things without a patient’s consent and if I were them then I would’ve stopped using the flashlight as well, not a big deal. With the implication that they were doing something malicious though, I probably would’ve just informed the patient that I didn’t feel comfortable performing this procedure on them.

You are not in charge in the hospital. What you want isn’t always taken into consideration. You can not refuse to allow them to see the area postop. Not sure what has gotten in patients lately but it makes the job impossible. If you don’t want to be looked at, skip surgery

If it makes you feel any better, your doctor isn't going to risk recording you and ruining their career. Did they at least do a good job on the surgery ?