The number of trans people seeking a first appointment at a gender identity clinic has risen fivefold since 2018, with some waiting up to six years to be seen, figures reveal.
Waiting lists at Scotland’s five specialist clinics have risen from under 1,000 in 2018 to more than 5,000 this year, with campaigners saying that the surge can be attributed to improved social attitudes towards trans people.
The smallest adult clinic, in Inverness, had 86 people in the queue, while the biggest, in Glasgow, had almost 3,000. Scotland’s only specialist gender clinic for under-18s, at the Sandyford in Glasgow, has more than 1,100 patients on its waiting list.
Patients can be referred to the clinics by a GP or can self refer through NHS websites. The average wait is more than three years for adults and four years for under-18s. The Scottish government has conceded that these waiting times are too long.
Doctors have waited more than two years for a review of gender protocols to be signed off by Professor Sir Gregor Smith, Scotland’s chief medical officer, who promised to “promote, protect and realise the rights of every trans and non-binary person in Scotland”.
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Delays are leading to pressure on GPs to prescribe hormones, which they are reluctant to do.
Dr Catriona Morton, deputy chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs in Scotland, told BBC Scotland: “Transgender patients have often spent many years thinking about transitioning and they feel that having treatment is a right. And that’s correct. Sometimes people feel we should just be able to prescribe hormones and it’s easy, but actually, all the hormones that we use have risks and they’re not minor risks.”
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She said that they did not want to create shortcuts that would lead to GPs prescribing without looking at all the risks and doing a full assessment.
She added that GPs could be left in a “very difficult situation” when patients turned to the private sector, which was often unregulated.
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“We can’t assess every private provider. For some GPs, it feels an impossible situation,” Morton said. “But the way to avoid that is to have proper NHS services.”
The Scottish government said that “substantive work” was under way to improve gender identity health services.
