The UK’s National Health Service is great for many reasons.

It allows transgender people to get hormones free of charge, and surgical procedures for trans people are also free – via extensive waiting lists, admittedly. The General Medical Council also has an online guide which contains advice for doctors about how to best meet the needs of their transgender patients.

But despite these guidelines, the public health system still seems to be lacking the proper resources and knowledge about trans people and their physical, mental and emotional requirements.

What with Trump’s transgender military ban, the bathroom bill debacle in Texas – which was thankfully repealed – and one set of parents in the Isle of Wight going so far as to pull their child out of school rather than allow them to be in a class with a transgender classmate, trans rights are a major topic of debate right now.

And let’s be honest – a lot of this arguing is bolstered by a general lack of education about trans people and how they fit into society.

Spoiler alert: that’s all we want to do. Fit in and live our lives. And it isn’t just loud-mouthed transphobes who suffer from this ignorance. Unfortunately, it can have a massive impact on the lives of trans people, making everything more complicated for us.

In this instance, I’m referring to the startling amount of doctors – excluding private gender specialists – who are utterly clueless when it comes to their trans patients.

For me, this became apparent when I applied for a new passport containing my chosen name and correct gender marker earlier this year, at the age of 22. Read more via PinkNews