This happened in the UK to a nurse named Jennifer Melle. Melle is is originally from Uganda and her origin matters because her race became part of the incident that led to her suspension.
Back in 2024, Melle was working the night shift and was approached by another nurse who said that a patient was being disruptive and trying to discharge himself. She got on the phone to ask a doctor if this was possible.
“I spoke to the doctor on the phone and I said, ‘Mr. X would like to self-charge, is there anything we can do?’ And they overheard me and began yelling and roaring, saying ‘I’m a miss, don’t call me mr’.”…
Melle recalled: “He became so outraged and began to call me the N-word multiple times, despite me trying to calm the situation.
“He had two prison guards, and we’d chained and cuffed his legs as well, and he was lunging at me, and I was shaking. I had to just take a few steps back. I had to just walk away and leave the environment.”
So the story here is that the patient was a trans woman serving time in a men’s prison. He was a convicted pedophile and his medical records listed him as male. During the incident, Melle refused to call him “she.”
Ms Melle was reported to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in May 2024 after she told the prisoner: “Sorry, I cannot refer to you as ‘her’ or ‘she’, as it’s against my faith and Christian values, but I can call you by your name.”
Despite the verbal abuse and attempted attack, the hospital place Melle under investigation for misgendering the trans patient/convict. However, she continued to work while the investigation was ongoing.
In March of 2025, Melle spoke to the press about her incident and the hospital responded by suspending her, claiming that her description of the what happened may have made it possible for someone to identify the patient, thereby violating his confidentiality. To be clear, Melle never identified him or used his name, but the hospital said it was concerned and suspended her for the next ten months.
Her suspension finally ended in January of this year when she was allowed to return to work. Today, the hospital reached a settlement with her to avoid a tribunal set to begin today.
Ms Melle, a Christian nurse from south London, had been set to bring an employment tribunal against Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust beginning on Monday.
But the parties have settled, two months after Ms Melle returned to work at St Helier Hospital in Carshalton, Surrey, when her suspension was lifted.
She said: “I cannot discuss the terms of the settlement, but generally I am glad that my employer has finally decided to extend an olive branch to me. I look forward to being able to focus on the job I love instead of defending myself against various bizarre accusations.
“It should never have come to this. No nurse or other medical professionals should ever have to face what I have faced simply for telling the truth, doing their job and reporting racist abuse and physical threats from a patient.”
She is right that it should never have come to this. It seems obvious from this side of the Atlantic that the hospital never should have placed her under investigation in the first place as the prisoner was clearly violent and verbally abusive. Also, the suspension that followed her decision to talk to the media looks a lot less like concern for the convict’s privacy that concern for embarrassment of the hospital over the stupid decisions they made here.
Unfortunately, despite today’s settlement, this still isn’t over for Melle:
The NHS nurse, however, still faces two investigations launched by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), whose code of conduct instructs that nurses should not display their religious beliefs “in an inappropriate way”.
On the ongoing investigation, she said: “My ordeal matters not only for me, but for every nurse who should be able to practice according to conscience, biological reality, and basic safeguarding principles without fear.
“I have been through the darkest days of my life and it is still far from over.”
The UK supreme court has already ruled what the definition of a woman is. Referring to a man being kept in a male prison as “Mr.” should not violate any code of conduct. Here’s an interview with Mrs. Melle from March 2025 where she describes what happened up to that point.
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