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Jennifer Melle was disciplined for talking to the media about her experience. I'm grateful to her for doing so. Many NHS staff are appalled by the ridiculous demands of transgenderism in their workplace, and the harm it's doing.

It's hard to believe this kind of thing is really happening in the NHS. A violent, entitled man - a convicted paedophile - claims to be a woman now. A nurse is punished for referring to him as "he".

The problem is that, for years, NHS policies have indulged this kind of foolishness. NHS trusts have paid transactivist organisations to provide so-called training, in which staff are told they must play along with the delusion that a man has changed sex.

This is called "respectful", but it disrespects hard-working staff, who have enough to think about already without having to worry about offending a paedophile and being censured for it. Their focus should be on delivering good healthcare, not on pronouns and identities.

It's not just pronouns. Many NHS trusts will allow a man to use the women's changing room if he says he is "transitioning" - a meaningless term, since his "transition" may amount to nothing more than longer hair, a female name, and a bit of make-up.

We regularly hear of cases exactly like this, and not just those that have come to court. It seems that one man's wish to be treated like a woman - by sharing the women's changing room - counts more than any feelings of female colleagues. Their privacy is entirely disregarded.

Patients are harmed by this ideology, too. Single-sex wards are a lie if a man identifying as a woman is on a women's ward. Staff are then expected to tell the women that there are no men on the ward. Remember that a woman reportedly raped on a female-only ward was told it could not have happened because there were no men there. It's a policy that requires nurses to lie to patients about something so simple they can all see it. What does that do to trust between patients and staff?

It's not even good for the person who identifies as transgender. Changing their medical records to record the wrong sex may be what they want, but it is confusing for clinical staff and puts the patient at risk.

Everyone knows that all this is wrong. It cannot be left to individual employees to have the courage to speak up, knowing they may face disciplinary measures, as both Jennifer Melle and Sandie Peggie did.

This must be fixed from the top down. It is past time for Health Secretary Wes Streeting to end this madness.

Fiona McAnena is director of campaigns at Sex Matters