To think mixed sex adult wards should be banned

[roarfeckingroarr]

Please could someone in the NHS or otherwise explain why women are expected to sleep in the same room and share bathrooms with strange men they don't know while at their most vulnerable?

Is it all just down to cost / overwhelmed services or is this an intentional policy?

This is on the bank of the thread with the poor woman whose 16 year old daughter was on a ward with adult men, some drunk.

Don't get me started on men staying all night in the postnatal wards.

I went into a bay on MAU when I was in with sepsis, and was flashed repeatedly by the (multiple) men who shared the bay. When I complained, I was told if I - and they - was/were sick enough for a bed in the MAU, it didn't matter what sex the other occupants were. Also that it was not technically "a ward" (it was a side bay of six beds to a room, among other similar rooms - the exact same set up as the wards), so same sex rules didn't apply.

@Skiingwithgin

In our hospital it's the same. Mixed ward yes, but each bay has 6 men and in the next bay 6 woman.

I do agree with the it should be separate but the NHS is so over stretched you're lucky to get a bed or even seen at all. Until you've been in there and seen it for yourself you need to be grateful that we have an NHS!

I'm female too 🙄

I agree with you OP.

Which would still be the case on any ward, as in most hospitals you can roam freely apart from places like ITU etc. So unless you want hospitals that are just men, or just women, it really isn’t any different.

One of the NHS's downfalls was getting rid of matrons and requiring nurses to have a degree. A 1940s post-war conception that has become the nation's biggest employer with a catalogue of scandals under its belt (yet somehow 'the best system in the world, bar none'). Almost like nationalised healthcare, 'free' to the point of service, is not sustainable on a large scale.

Yes. Weird agenda behind that shit.

Jesus, that's so inappropriate that he was out there. Awful.

How appalling.

Ok my comment as a guy.

mixed wards yes no real issue with that.

now mixed bays nope. If I’m in hospital it’s more than lightly respiratory so dead ropy with hospital gown.

The last thing I want to do is flash my ass at some poor woman at same time fighting an oxygen mask / iv drip stands. Which I will be honest is least of concerns.

I suspect male or female neither would be happy.

On thinking back to one of my previous admitting with chest infection. I might of been in mixed space between A&E and ward but I will be honest I was not in a great state and was just trying to breathe.

I do agree with the it should be separate but the NHS is so over stretched you're lucky to get a bed or even seen at all. Until you've been in there and seen it for yourself you need to be grateful that we have an NHS!

The nhs is its own worst enemy.

Unnecessary prescriptions of un needed medication.

Sending out letters after the appointment so you miss it.

Sending out wrong information so you go to the appointment but still miss it because you are in the wrong department even though that's where the letter told u to go.

Not checking records so you turn up for appointments you dont even need as they could have gone by results from previous admissions.

Keeping you over night only to discover the person you see is actually just a phone call that you could have taken at home.

No communication what so ever so no one knows what you are there for, who is even responsible for you and multiple people conducting the same things because no one realises its all been done already.

Etc..

@Realistnotpessimist - if you say so.

In single-sex wards you’d notice men wandering freely pretty quickly, though. Plus the men would have to go to the trouble of going looking for women to harass/leer at/expose themselves to, etc, whereas on a mixed ward it’s opportunistic. And a locked door on a ward, or female-only floors, is a simpler and cheaper solution than separate hospitals.

I also haaaaaate that men are allowed overnight on maternity wards. Generally not helping with their wives and babies but snoring loudly/watching as tv loudly/shoving their chairs through the curtain into my bed/generally manspreading noisily about the place.

Yes and then your notes are mysteriously lost. The GP hasn’t had any info from the hospital and vice versa. It’s beyond a joke.

Then there's the keeping you all day despite being discharged waiting for medication you can buy from a pharmacy or already have plenty of that you brought with you. Then making out whoever is picking you up is the one causing the hold up because no one actually called them to say you can go home now.

In the 20 years I've been working in NHS hospitals, I've never seen a mixed bay. Mixed wards - yes.

To do away with mixed wards, you'd have to do away with speciality wards. My hospital only has room for 1 stroke ward, 1 cardiac ward, 1 respiratory ward etc with only a small pool of consultants for each speciality. You couldn't have a female stroke ward and a male one. If you did, you'd have to lose out on speciality care.

Just to add, there are A LOT of very vulnerable, confused, delirious, unwell people in hospitals who are not aware of their actions - both men and women. Not everything is due to intent to harm or malice (disclaimer - I'm not saying it's ok - it's not, just the reasons might be different to what people seem to be thinking).

Women on floors isn’t a cheap solution at all. If you have a ward with four bays you can use those bays differently all the time. Sometimes you may have 50/50, other times one bay might be men and the other three women. If you have a womens floor once its full you have to turn away patients rather than repurpose another bay. If you have a lot of men, you have to turn them away even on days when the womens floor is nowhere near capacity. It would be a huge huge waste of resources.

It really isn’t any different, my husband was recently in hospital, the door to the next ward was much closer than the next bay. You only see feet going by your curtains at night etc, you really aren’t going to learn the feet/slippers of all your bay mates, especially in lower light. Surely by having a womens ward you’re actually making it easier, as you know which wards have women in, where as on a mixed ward you don’t know which bays are mens and which are womens beyond the bay you’re in.

Nope, as the other thread showed mixed loos/washing facilities are not uncommon on mixed wards and its something I've seen in my local hospital.

Bays are open, anyone on the ward can wander into another bay, there is no privacy. Wards are short staffed. Bays are intermingled, not necessarily (as one PP on the other thread described) men on one side, women on the other with the nursing station in the middle.

So intermingled bays, mixed facilities and women who may be partially sedated, in pain, unable to move easily. Then people express shock and surprise at sexual assaults in hospitals.

Mixed sex accommodation is banned. There are exceptions around clinical delivery - ITU, recovery, paediatrics, short stay assessment units and specialist provision for very small cohorts of patients.
Accommodation must be single sex with single sex lavatory and bathing facilities accessible without going through the accommodation of the opposite sex.

The accommodation can be in bays rather than whole wards, but must have fixed walls between them.

Where there are breaches the patients should get a written explanation and apology and the situation should be changed as rapidly as possible.

Issues occur on maternity wards where some want partners with them and other s want yo sleep without strange men on the ward.

Also issues when hospital is full and using escalation areas. Rather is a bigger issue than mixed sex accommodation though.

Most trusts now have a baywatch scheme to reduce risks to frail elderly. That means a staff member present in the bay at all times.

I don't need to think about it, I have experienced it in a number of occasions.

Day surgery units can be mixed too. People should not be sedated on a ward.

I would hate to be I'm a mixed ward and I know my 19yr old daughter would hate it too.

My mil was in a mixed ward a few weeks ago and there was a man in a bed right next to her so they aren't in different bays or kept apart at all

Ssu and the ambulatory unit is mixed sex bays as well as wards in my local hospital. I know because I'm a frequent flyer (chronic autoimmune condition)

I've seen every male part going which doesn't bother me but... I can understand why it it is not suitable for a 16 year old and why others may be bothered fwiw our hospital treats 16 -19 year olds still in education on the Paeds ward. So not all bad.

Apparently the reasoning for MAU being excluded is that you're not meant to be there for long. I was in for a week, there were no beds on the actual wards.

Mind the MAU also left me sleep in a chair when I first went in, as apparently as a wheelchair user I was a fall risk if given a trolley to sleep on. But not if I was in a chair? 🤷🏼‍♀️