An unborn baby died because the transgender pregnant mother’s medical records listed her as a male.
A pregnant woman living as a transgender male arrived to a hospital with severe abdominal pains and nurses didn’t immediately consider it an emergency because she appeared to be an obese man who stopped taking blood pressure medication.
Healthcare professionals at the hospital didn’t even think this individual may be a pregnant woman because she was listed as a male in her medical records.
Women in their child-bearing years showing up to the hospital with these same symptoms are immediately taken in and examined just in case there are pregnancy-related complications, but since nurses thought this patient was a male, the unborn baby didn’t make it and the patient delivered a stillborn baby.
The Associated Press reported:
The 32-year-old patient told the nurse he was transgender when he arrived at the emergency room and his electronic medical record listed him as male. He hadn’t had a period in several years and had been taking testosterone, a hormone that has masculinizing effects and can decrease ovulation and menstruation. But he quit taking the hormone and blood pressure medication after he lost insurance.
A home pregnancy test was positive and he said he had “peed himself” — a possible sign of ruptured membranes and labor. A nurse ordered a pregnancy test but considered him stable and his problems non-urgent.
Several hours later, a doctor evaluated him and the hospital test confirmed pregnancy. An ultrasound showed unclear signs of fetal heart activity, and an exam revealed that part of the umbilical cord had slipped into the birth canal. Doctors prepared to do an emergency cesarean delivery, but in the operating room no fetal heartbeat was heard. Moments later, the man delivered a stillborn baby.
“It’s a very upsetting incident, it’s a tragic outcome,” said Dr. Tamara Wexler, a hormone specialist at NYU Langone Medical Center.
“Medical training should include exposure to transgender patients” so health workers are better able to meet their needs, Wexler said. “A lot of doctors who are practicing didn’t have that in their training” but can still learn from such patients now.
Shockingly, Dr. Daphna Stroumsa of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor still believes the hospital correctly classified the patient as a male.
“He was rightly classified as a man” in the medical records and appears masculine, Stroumsa said. “But that classification threw us off from considering his actual medical needs.”
Here’s an idea…how about every patient, male or female be given a pregnancy test just in case, because diversity is more important than efficiently saving lives.
