NHS Scotland: Period products need to be made available to all staff who need them – Dr Rosie Baruah

You’ll no doubt have heard healthcare workers, particularly those who do long, late shifts in hospitals, talk about the basic essentials they need in their workplace to help their well-being during these hours: a quiet place to have a break, access to hot food and drinks, somewhere to simply gather your thoughts when you need a few moments.

Easy access to period products for busy healthcare staff should not be seen as an optional extra by the NHS (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Another thing that’s less frequently talked about, but impacts more than half of the NHS workforce (and indirectly impacts everyone else), is easy access to menstrual products.

Healthcare workers, especially those in hospitals, are often on sites that don’t have retail facilities that are open outside of hours, but our work doesn’t stop when the shops shut, and neither do periods.

Some people perhaps don’t realise how unpredictable periods can be, and whilst those of us who have periods do our best to bring products with us to work, you can often be working somewhere that is quite far from your normal clinical area, with a patient you can’t leave for a sustained length of time because they’re critically ill, and your period can start without warning.

And whilst you might have access to toilet facilities, if there are no period products there, you can end up having to stuff your underwear with toilet paper – something I have had to do in the past.

We expect to go to a toilet and find toilet paper as a basic hygiene provision by our employers, so why are period products not seen that way and instead viewed as a luxury product?

They are fundamental to being able to function at work: the distraction of knowing that you’re about to bleed through your clothing and you have no replacement period products on you, whilst trying to look after patients in a very high stakes environment is extremely tough, and it’s something that brings with it a sense of shame and loss of dignity that is potentially preventable.

This affects everyone with periods, and even those without because we all know someone who has periods and it’s important to understand how this impacts them. In healthcare we don’t often have the ability to get to our personal belongings, or carry products around in our scrubs, so having toilets that aren’t equipped with period products is a real problem.

Anyone who has had periods that are heavy will know exactly what it feels like when you’re down to your last pad or tampon and you can just feel that you’re beginning to bleed through it – usually at a time when you cannot afford to be distracted because you are wanting to use all of your cognitive bandwidth on looking after the sick people around you.

I see this as a correction of an omission. I think period products should always have been provided in all toilets that are accessible by the public, and in all employee toilets.

I don’t see it as being an added extra – it’s an essential part of employee provision. I hope that all health boards will listen to BMA Scotland’s call – and the very welcome recent letter sent to them by public health minister Maree Todd – for period products to be made available to all employees who need them.

Dr Rosie Baruah, anaesthetist and intensive-care unit consultant

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