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NHS staff members have been asked to refer to patients as 'they' to avoid offending transgender people.

Courses have been offered to managers to train them to make use of gender-free language 'normalised.'

The Scottish Trans Alliance (STA) and LGBT Health and Wellbeing have advertised the sessions - which are offered by NHS Lothian.

A team will teach staff to describe people as 'they' as opposed to 'her' and 'she' or 'his' and 'he' in work and at home.

'Top tips' for supporting transgender patients were presented in a handout to NHS staff which read: “Don’t assume you know which pronouns and titles people prefer — ask what they prefer."

(Image: Getty Images/Onoky)

It added: "Think about how you call for people in waiting rooms — ensure that you don’t accidentally use old names or titles”.

A senior figure at NHS Lothian who attended an hour-long session on December 6 last year, spoke to The Times saying: "They were telling us to actually refer to each other using the term ‘they’.

"If we started using ‘they’ in our personal lives it would become natural when we go into the workplace to refer to everyone using the ‘they’ pronoun, not ‘he’ or ‘she’."

(Image: Getty Images)

STA Manager James Morton confirmed to the paper that training was arranged by the health board.

Alison McCallum, director of public health and public policy at NHS Lothian, also explained about the training programmes.

She said that they were about ‘exploring the appropriate terms and definitions relating to transgender and non-binary people, including the use of non-binary pronouns’.