Introduction

UMCG has a smaller gender team, which mainly treats people from the three northern provinces Groningen, Friesland, and Drenthe.

 

Route via UMCG

There are big advantages and big disadvantages to the gender teams in Amsterdam (VUmc) and Groningen (UMCG). The main advantage is you only have to deal with one group of people who organize many things for you. If you get permission to take hormones they arrange an appointment with a hormone expert (endocrinologist) for you. And if you need gender surgery, they make sure all checks before and after the operation are carefully planned.

But this advantage also comes with a disadvantage. The disadvantage is that all the care providers in the gender team know about your status and your files. The team makes decisions together, so if a hormone expert is of the opinion that you shouldn’t get an operation, it doesn’t make any difference what the surgeons think of it: the team makes decisions based on consensus, so if anybody is opposed to a treatment, the whole group is opposed to it. A difference between UMCG and VUmc is the scale: because the team is small, you soon get to know all the therapists and they all know you.
Another disadvantage of the gender teams is their location. Transgender people can go to Amsterdam (VUmc) or to Groningen (UMCG). If you happen to live in the east of the Netherlands and you don’t possess a car, you will spend a lot of time traveling.

It is very well possible to get your diagnose and the hormones via the gender teams in Amsterdam or Groningen and have your surgery done in a foreign country. The other way around, so diagnosis and/or hormones outside the VU and UMCG and hormones and/or surgery from VUmc or UMCG, is much more difficult. If you want that, make sure you get the right information.

 

Gender team website

https://www.umcg.nl/NL/UMCG/Afdelingen/Universitair_Centrum_Psychiatrie/Patienten/zob/Genderdysforie/Paginas/default.aspx

 

Experiences from others

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Waiting time

https://www.umcg.nl/NL/Zorg/Volwassenen/Wachttijden/Paginas/Genderteam.aspx

 

Treatment

Unfortunately there is not enough information on the UMCG site to compile an overview for trans men similar to the one we made for trans women at VUmc, amongst other things, we miss current information about the waiting times before the intake, the diagnostic phase and the hormone therapy. We can however share earlier experiences from trans men:

 
The procedure is:

- Waiting list

- Intake 1 consultation with a list of about 400 questions on a computer.

- Waiting list 8 to 10 months (equal for trans man and trans woman)

- Diagnosis 3-6 meetings with 1-2 months between consecutive conversations

- Waiting list

- Endocrinologist

- Real Life Experience (12 months)

- Waiting list

 

Operations in the following order of succession: (*)

- Breast surgery

- Waiting list

- Hysterectomy

- Waiting list

- Meta or phalloplasty

- Recovery period

- Testicular implants

 

(*) Combinations of surgeries are allowed, changing the order of succession isn’t. After each operation you will need recovery time of at least 3 months; the next operation can take place if and only if the surgeon is also convinced that you have recovered enough. Corrective surgery: sometimes corrective surgery is necessary. After solving a small problem sometimes a few weeks of recovery time is enough. Of course you are free to undergo only those operations that are needed for you.

 

Flyer

https://www.umcg.nl/SiteCollectionDocuments/UMCG/Afdelingen/Psychiatrie/Genderdysforie.pdf

 

Filing complaints

If you are of the opinion your treatment hasn’t been optimal, you can file a complaint. For more information see this page. We would appreciate it if you report this complaint to Transvisie as well.