A transgender doctor complained that she felt threatened by a ‘much smaller’ nurse in the female-only changing rooms at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife, a tribunal has heard.
A senior medic in the ongoing legal action between transgender medic Dr Beth Upton and nurse Sandie Peggie, said that it was ‘plausible’ that Dr Upton could have felt threatened.
Dr Elspeth Pitt, a consultant in emergency medicine at NHS Fife, told the tribunal that Dr Upton was ‘sobbing’ following a confrontation with Ms Peggie.
She added that her fellow doctor, who was born male but identifies as female, ‘was really upset, she felt very fearful, and, at that time, had felt cornered’.
Following the incident, Dr Pitt chaperoned Dr Upton to her car in case there was another encounter with the nurse and described the medic as feeling ‘quite threatened’.
The row between Ms Peggie and Dr Upton centres around the trans medic using a female-only changing room which led to the nurse accusing Fife Health Board of breaching the Equality Act.
In the tribunal, in response to the suggestion Dr Upton felt threatened by her much smaller colleague, Charlotte Elves, Ms Peggie’s junior counsel, said Dr Upton was a ‘biological male in his 20s’ who was around 6ft tall.
In contrast, she described Ms Peggie as ‘a woman in her 50s, far smaller’ and countered Dr Pitt’s suggestion that Dr Upton was made to feel unsafe by Sandie Peggie, calling it ‘completely implausible’.
Transgender medic Dr Beth Upton (pictured) complained that she felt threatened by a ‘much smaller’ nurse in the female-only changing rooms at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife
Ms Sandie Peggie pictured) was described as ‘a woman in her 50s, far smaller’ and her defense called the characterisation of her as threatening as ‘completely implausible’
Dr Pitt insisted it ‘did not sound implausible to me’ but clarified that the trans medic was not ‘physically threatened’ but ‘frightened’ by Ms Peggie’s ‘verbal attack’.
The tribunal also heard from charge nurse Louise Curran, Ms Peggie’s line manager, that Dr Upton had considered reporting the encounter to the police as a ‘hate crime’, The Telegraph reported.
The row between Ms Peggie and Dr Upton centres on an incident on Christmas Eve 2023 where the nurse experienced a sudden and heavy period and feared that it had bled through to her scrubs.
The nurse entered the female changing room and was surprised to find Dr Upton there.
It was the last of three occasions Ms Peggie had encountered the doctor within the changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, an employment tribunal in Dundee heard earlier this year.
She challenged the doctor over her presence in the space that was labelled as a women’s changing room, and just hours later a bullying complaint had been lodged by her.
Ms Peggie was suspended from work at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on January 3 2024, after Dr Upton made an allegation of bullying and harassment, the tribunal heard earlier this year.
Counter to the complaint, the nurse submitted a formal claim to the employment tribunal in May last year against NHS Fife and Dr Upton for sexual harassment, belief discrimination, and victimisation.
Dr Elspeth Pitt (pictured), a consultant in emergency medicine at NHS Fife, told the tribunal that Dr Upton was ‘sobbing’ following a confrontation with Ms Peggie
Ms Peggie complained of being forced to share a single-sex space with someone she believed to be male.
She also complained of being victimised for holding a gender-critical belief that biological sex is unchangeable.
At the time of the complaint, Dr Upton was unable to hold a gender recognition certificate, meaning that technically the medic was legally male.
Dr Pitt told the tribunal she found Dr Upton in a state of ‘visible distress’ in a corridor at around midnight, shortly after the ‘unpleasant and painful’ changing room confrontation.
Dr Pitt said the medic had confided that she felt cornered and unable to escape Ms Peggie.
She told the tribunal: ‘She [Dr Upton] said she felt as if she had been cornered and that the end of a shift was not a good time to have this conversation, but it escalated and she felt she couldn’t get away. She just felt very upset by what had been said to her.’
Dr Pitt said that Ms Peggie had complained that the trans medic ‘should not been in the changing room’ and had made parallels with a ‘convicted rapist’, referring to trans rapist Isla Bryson who attacked two women in 2016 and 2019 but now identifies as a woman.
Dr Pitt described Dr Upton as ‘sobbing’ after the encounter and then told the tribunal that she believed it was completely plausible that the trans medic had been made to feel unsafe by Ms Peggie.
Earlier this week in a stunning development Ms Peggie was cleared of gross misconduct by an NHS Fife disciplinary hearing as part of separate proceedings brought against her (Pictured: Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy Fife)
She said: ‘There’s no question to me, having met Dr Upton in that corridor, that she felt very threatened.
‘And just to be clear, it was a verbal attack. It wasn’t that she felt physically threatened. She just felt frightened because of things that had been said to her.’
After walking her to her car, Dr Pitt sent an email to the medic’s line manager, Dr Kate Searle, and Ms Peggie’s line manager, asking to speak the following week.
Ms Elves highlighted an email sent by Dr Searle on Dec 29 2023 to around 20 senior consultants in which she said she had spoken to Dr Upton.
Dr Searle said that she had ensured that Dr Upton ‘knows we all support her, and that we condemn the actions of Sandie’.
Ms Elves asked Dr Pitt whether she engaged with three email chains about the incident ‘as they were becoming increasingly partisan, condemnatory of Sandie Peggie, and you knew that was not appropriate.’
Dr Pitt said: ‘I don’t use email as a form of conversation.’
In a statement, the health board said: ‘NHS Fife did not initiate the tribunal proceedings and is instead one of two ‘respondents’ being sued.
‘NHS Fife cannot unilaterally stop proceedings – only the claimant can choose to withdraw the case. The claimant has said in a recent statement from her legal representatives that she is determined to continue with her legal claim, as she is entitled to do.’
Earlier this week in a stunning development Ms Peggie was cleared of gross misconduct by an NHS Fife disciplinary hearing as part of separate proceedings brought against her.
