Dr Rosie Baruah: #BMAPeriods Update

The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 has been in force for over a year – it does not, however, extend to ensuring hospitals and GP surgeries have period products available for staff and patient use when and where they may be needed. Here at BMA Scotland our campaign, #BMAPeriods, aim is to ensure all healthcare workers in NHS Scotland have access to period products when they need them, where they need them. All geographical NHS Boards have committed to providing period products for staff – but many have not provided timelines for this.
We conducted a survey of BMA members earlier this year to gauge where we are with provision of period products at the point of use. We had 193 responses across all health boards, and 71.5% of respondents worked in secondary care settings. Take-homes from the survey were:

• 42% of respondents knew their place of work provided period products to staff. 75% of these respondents said these products were regularly stocked up and 82% said they were easily accessible.
• 62% of respondents felt comfortable raising the issue of period products with management.

This isn’t quite where we hoped to be at this stage – we want everyone who needs these products to be able to access a reliably-stocked supply. It’s also unsurprising but disappointing that so many respondents don’t feel comfortable discussing the issue of period products availability. This speaks to the taboo around discussing menstruation, even amongst healthcare professionals,.
The free text comments told a few stories too – here are a few in italics, alongside my reflections on them:
Are management staff receptive?
“It’s such a taboo subject still with stigma attached- “your period your problem”. I particularly wouldn’t want to bring this up to a male manager either. But I would like the availability of period products.”
“Management currently focussed on trying to safely staff the hospital unfortunately.”
“Your period, your problem” sums up the approach we have had to take when managing periods at work. It’s completely understandable that this has also allowed the perpetuation of a general lack of acknowledgement around periods in the workplace and the challenges they can bring. If NHS Boards arrange for universal placement of products and set an expectation they will be available when needed just like we expect toilet paper to be available where and when we need it, individual managers wont have to spend time ensuring products are provided – we know they have incredibly important service delivery issues to focus on already.
The BMA is virtue signalling – we should provide our own products.
“I don’t think professionals in regular employment should be expecting free sanitary products. From a personal perspective, my salary is above average and I would be embarrassed at the thought of expecting the government to subsidise something I can clearly afford.”
“I don’t agree that this is a priority. Frankly it’s virtue signalling.”
“This is hardly a priority. Women have been getting tampons/ towels from their colleagues since the dawn of time. And we are technically adults.”
“I think that most responsible women can manage their periods and that maybe the BMA should be spending time fighting for decent pay which ensures that doctors can buy their own sanitary products. I’m not comfortable paying for my union to carry out progressively left wing and irrelevant, distracting projects when there are much larger and more pressing issues for physicians in the profession.”
“It is not a responsibility of an employer, and I would not entertain providing such. The BMA is seriously misguided in this matter.”
Virtue signalling may be defined as ‘the expression of a conspicuous, self-righteous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character: we don’t believe that #BMAPeriods is a campaign based on virtue signalling, but rather a campaign borne from an as-yet unmet need.
The BMA has long campaigned heavily for basic facilities for doctors working in hospitals – access to hot food, minimal standards for on call rooms, and less exhausting working patterns and better pay. These are all duties of a trade union. Campaigning for provision of period products to all doctors who may need them isn’t self-righteous virtue signalling, nor is it left wing, irrelevant or distracting. If you have never had to work a nightshift stuffing toilet paper in your underwear as often as you can, knowing you are likely to bleed through anyway and hoping the blood wont smell too strongly in handover – well you’re lucky, but this shouldn’t come down to luck.
We are adults, it’s true, and it’s great that we can try and get hold of period products from colleagues if we can. But doctors, particularly doctors in training, work day and nightshifts when they may not know anyone well enough to ask and may never be able to get products from their bags. In these circumstances it doesn’t matter how much you earn, as there are no shops or dispensing machines open out of hours and you can’t stuff your vagina with ten-pound notes to stop yourself bleeding over your clothes no matter how healthy your bank balance.
The #BMAPeriods campaign has a lot of work still to do. We still do not have reliable provision of period products in NHS healthcare facilities. We also have work to do to break the menstrual taboo, including the perception that periods are purely a personal problem to be dealt with by the person experiencing them – the solution involves all of us accepting that period provision is not optional, but essential.
Dr Rosie Baruah

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