Hospital privacy ( or not)

I am sure that most women are given privacy at their doctors, consultants, or gynaecologists with or without a female chaperone. But at the hospital?

Forty years ago my 17 year old girlfriend was referred to a London hospital by her GP because of severe menstrual problems. She said she had to wait in a large waiting room and then maybe 6 women at a time were called through. Each one had to go in to a curtained cubicle, take off their clothes and lie on the couch waiting for the doctor. All seemingly normal.

Except each cubicle had curtains around three sides so you walked in to your own cubicle but the other side was open to the large hospital room. She said there were all sorts of people wandering around the room. The doctor with his students and nurse in tow went from cubicle to cubicle but she said that there were people walking in to the room and out and she said that the view would have been of 6 naked women on beds with their legs in the air.

As an 18 year old this was as much an image as I could deal with and wondered if maybe it did not lack quite the privacy she pictured especially as her first gyne encounter.

However 10 years later I had a secretary in London with a lot of gyne problems and had to have time off for appointments. She went to the same hospital and described exactly the same experience. She said you were public property.

I assume now some 30 years later there is more caution but I wonder. A friend had an experience a few weeks ago but I will tell that another time soon.

I have stated this elsewhere before, but I was in a holding area, prior to going into day surgery. I was in just a hospital gown, and lying on a gurney. The nurse had positioned me with my knees bent, and legs spread. Any one walking by the end of my gurney could look my way and see up my gown. The holding area was quite busy, about twelve beds, and doctors, nurses, lab techs etc, all walking in and out. I remember the orderly standing there talking to me for a good while before he took me back. I am sure he was getting a good look, as well as anyone around, which was quite embarrassing at the time, but as I look back on it, it is quite erotic.

Not exactly the same theme but I went to moscow to look at what I believe is the most advanced treatment centre for cancer in the world using particle physics. They treated cancer of the eye, brain, and cervix in three separate units. The centre was ancient and looked like an english railway station one hundred years ago.

The cervical cancer treatment room had a chair in it like a dentists chair of over fifty years ago. A large chair on a base and one would need to climb up in to it.

The waiting area outside was just a large area at the end of the corridor to go in to the treatment room.

Patients just had to get undressed there and sit naked before going in to the room naked. There was no changing area and no gowns.No privacy.

Of course the russians have a much more liberal attitude to nudity.

The tragedy of the country was that the radiographer had left to work as a cashier in a bank where she earned more money.

I was in the recovery room from my surgery and there was absolutely no privacy at all...no screens or anything....just rows of beds and patients jumbled together...men women children old young whatever

When i got my emergency enema when i was 15 there was absolutely no privacy for me. there were many people inside and outside the ER who could watch me

There were a few emergency room trips for me in which I had to be transferred to a different area of the hospital. They end up wheeling you in your bed down the hall in front of other hospital staff and people visiting other patients. It is quite embarrassing to say the least when you are wearing a see through gown!