Woman calls for national healthcare protocol after being denied mammogram due to disability.

Emma Myers 0:00

Carol Taylor is an award winning lawyer, artist, an adaptive fashion designer who was recently denied a mammogram on the basis of her disability. She spoke with Powerd media about her experience.

Carol Taylor 0:16

The first one was undertaken in a hospital environment, and it wasn't something I wanted to repeat. I just wanted to be able to access local imaging without all the Palava of going through a hospital. And I just thought I should be able to have equal access to health care same as anyone else. So I made the appointment last year. I gave full disclosure of my disability. The receptionist was very friendly and said, let me go and make some inquiries. And she came back and asked, Look, can the arms of your chair be moved out of the way? And I said, Yes, they certainly can. And she relayed that to the relevant person, and came back and said, Yep, they'll accept the empathy appointment. And then roll on to January, I get a phone call canceling the appointment on the basis that I need to be able to transfer from my wheelchair to another chair, and also be able to transfer to a table for an ultrasound. I thought I was just booking in for a mammogram. My chair is capable of taking me to six foot tall. It's also capable of laying me completely flat. Now, at this stage, I did not even know that I had a positive diagnosis of an aggressive cancer coming my way, but I have since had ultrasounds in addition to mammogram, three biopsies, the insertion of little metal trackers directly into the tumors, a chemo port in the other breast, all whilst reclined completely flat In my power chair. I really would like to understand how a bed could possibly improve on what I'd already given them. Why would that even have been necessary? So I went, Okay, I'm going to go elsewhere. And made other inquiries, and I found this sort of real lack of awareness threaded through nearly every call I made, like when I rang Breast Screen Queensland, they have a lovely brochure, and it talks about encouraging women with disability to have mammograms, but you know, it clearly states you need to be able to do a standing transfer into a standard wheelchair. Then you look at the New South Wales version of their brochure, and it says that some women with a disability, it may not be possible to have a mammogram. And then Victoria. Most people with disability can have a breast screen mammogram, but for some it may not be possible. South Australia's Bucha says we are also unable to screen women with electric wheelchairs. And Western Australia says some women who use wheelchairs are unable to be positioned appropriately for a mammogram. I just don't think that's acceptable to me. This is just a patchwork of ad hoc policy without real investigation and knowledge. When I rang back breastfeeding Queensland and pushed the issue and gently reminded them that people with disability are entitled to expect, at base level, equal access to service, and I would like them to attend that service on me, and I pushed it. And I have to say, they were very amicable, and they said, Yes, come on in. We'll see what we can do. And from the moment I went through the doors, they could not have been better. The whole thing has been managed so well by them. The Breast Screen nurses have been incredible, and the care I've received since has been just second to none. I'm calling for an open approach to having a national protocol of guidelines so that there's no misunderstanding, and we've got clear guidelines how people with disability are going to be treated. And I say people, because everyone assumes this is a women's issue, but when I put one of my posts up on socials, I was surprised to get a number of men respond to me and let me know that they had cancer in the breast. We want to raise awareness and commend those that do the right thing, but we really need to look at investing in some training. There's a genuine lack of awareness, perhaps from the top down, as to just simply asking the right questions, because, you know, no two disabilities are the same, so we can't build a one size fits all. I'm not expecting that, but we certainly need to move forward from what the current status quo is. How do you think we do that? Well, I think we start by making them aware, which is what I've tried to do, and I've suggested to look at it again with the same set of eyes that created the current existing situation is not really going to be progress unless there's lived experience to look at this from the point of view like it's hard for me to believe that this ever, ever involved anyone with disability, and certainly not someone in a

Emma Myers 4:31

wheelchair. Did they even offer alternatives? They didn't

Carol Taylor 4:35

offer alternatives. But to be quite honest with you, that's a bit of a Pandora's Box. Why should we be two differently at the end of the day when I turned up at breast green Queensland, it could not have been easier. I'd say the only inconvenience would be that my mammogram perhaps took a bit longer than someone that wasn't in a wheelchair, and it's been explained to me since that that can often be the case with women with larger breasts, or that can often. Even be the case where women have denser breasts. So I'm certainly not on my own in sometimes being a mammogram customer that might need a bit of extra time. In the end, it did not take that much longer, and it resulted in a life saving, I hope life saving, diagnosis.