Guidance: creating a medical report for Gender Recognition Certificate applications
Published 29 June 2022
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All medical reports submitted to the Gender Recognition Panel must be written by a doctor or psychologist registered with the General Medical Council (GMC) or the Health and Care Professions Council. The doctor must also have a licence to practise.
Requirements for medical reports
To get a Gender Recognition Certificate and be legally recognised in their affirmed gender, people usually need to provide 2 medical reports written by 2 different medical doctors or clinical psychologists in the UK.
The medical report template (PDF, 104KB, 5 pages) can be used for both medical reports.
Both reports need to include the name, practice address and contact details of the person who wrote the report.
First report
This must be written by a registered medical doctor or clinical psychologist who practises in the field of gender dysphoria.
It needs to confirm the gender dysphoria diagnosis and clinical history, including:
- who made the diagnosis
- when the diagnosis was made
- what evidence was used to make the diagnosis
Second report
This can be written by any registered medical doctor or clinical psychologist.
There are no specific requirements for this report and it can repeat information from the first report.
In either report
Include details of any treatment your patient has had or plans to have, including:
- any gender affirming surgical treatments they’ve had or plan to have
- any non-surgical treatment they’ve had or plan to have, such as hormone therapy
- if they have had no treatment and do not plan to have any, an explanation as to why
Protected information
Under the Gender Recognition Act, information relating to an application for a Gender Recognition Certificate is ‘protected information’ if it is acquired in an official capacity. It is an offence to disclose protected information to any other person except under the specific circumstances outlined in section 22 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
A full list of exemptions can be found at section 22(4) of the act but approved reasons will include disclosure:
- where the information has been anonymised
- to which the person has agreed
- to comply with a court order
- to meet obligations imposed by other statutes
You should note however that there is no general exemption for a disclosure in ‘public interest’.
Your patient has approached you in an official capacity. As a result, any information relating to this application is protected information. If other people have access to your files, get the patient’s consent before recording any information that could later be seen by a third party. This is true regardless of whether your patient’s application is successful.