The new NHS guidance for trans people could put lives at risk

As the NHS confirmed details of their new ‘single sex’ wards yesterday, my mind wasn’t on the politics or a culture war. 

It was thinking about the lives this puts at risk. 

This new guidance has asserted that trans women will not be put in female-only wards – and that toilets and changing rooms will be available to people based on their biological sex, not gender identity.

But anyone who has spent a night on a hospital ward knows that you are often more worried about the pain or exhaustion you’re facing, and what your next steps are to getting better.

What you are not thinking about is whether the person in the next bed was born with a uterus or not.

It is an utterly useless new guidance, not only because of a lack of resources across the NHS, but if it goes into effect in all hospitals, it can only cause harm.

The detriment to trans people’s mental health is not considered here, nor that they could die as a result. 

Some research has suggested that trans people are more likely to avoid seeking health care on time – due to fear of stigma, discrimination and ill treatment at the hands of GPs, hospital staff and discrimination when being admitted into hospital. 

Anecdotally, I already known trans people who don’t feel they will be able to access vital services as a result of this.

It is already a minefield to access spaces that are created in strict gender binaries.

And now the NHS has decided to make it even worse for trans people – by forcing them to use wards based on their ‘biological sex’.

They claim that trans people’s ‘privacy, dignity and safety’ are to be maintained, which is ironic given that they literally took all of that away in one swoop. 

You cannot maintain our privacy, dignity and safety while forcing us to out ourselves.

And they cannot surely believe that doing this could possibly help anyone.

This will result in trans people not seeking health care when they desperately need it. It simply means we are much more likely to suffer serious health care complications, and quite frankly, they will be more likely to die.

Sick people will put off going to A&E, hoping that things like their shortness of breath will solve itself. That the stinging pain in their abdomen is just temporary. Hoping that infection won’t get any worse. 

We all know where this will lead. 

Trans people in England already experience higher overall mortality rates compared to cisgender populations – data shows us that trans people are dying of suicide more than the general UK population – that should be the NHS’s focus. To save these lives.

But instead, they are committing to making life harder.

Even if the guidance says they will provide single rooms where they can, we all know this is unlikely to be possible in a system bursting at the seams already.

Currently, the NHS is facing a severe lack of space and bed capacity across all hospitals in England, driven by high occupancy rates, delayed discharges, and rising emergency demand.

How they expect to find single rooms for trans people is beyond me.

If the problem is that people feel ‘uncomfortable’ sharing a ward or a space with a trans person, I can assure you that the prospect of being humiliated and a risk of death, should weigh higher than their discomfort.

The six core values of the NHS according to the government’s website are: working together for patients, respect and dignity, commitment to quality of care, compassion, improving lives and that everyone counts. 

With this new guidance, every single one of those values will be broken for trans people.

For years, trans people in England have been accommodated on wards in line with their gender identity, under the NHS’s own guidance – without any harm or crisis.

Trans people are not the issue here.

It seems to me that the NHS is appeasing bigotry. It risks failing to provide for vulnerable patients, and considers bigots as more valuable than protecting trans people. I can’t seem to find any other reason for this backwards guidance.

Alongside a lack of beds that make this guidance hard to implement, the NHS already faces a multitude of challenges – waiting lists, lack of funding – so it’s absurd that this has been a priority

Now nurses and hospital staff have to play gender police, and follow a guidance that forces them to exclude, stigmatise and humiliate people. I’m pretty sure nurses go to work to help people, not to hurt them.

This new guidance follows a wave of trans exclusionary practices and guidelines that have swept across the UK ever since the UK Supreme Court ruling in April 2025. 

Slowly, but surely, trans people’s rights and dignity continue to be undermined, and we feel pushed further and further out of society, making our lives more miserable and frankly unlivable. 

The NHS was built on the promise that everyone counts. 

With this guidance, it has decided that trans people certainly don’t – and some of us will pay for it with our lives.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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