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.

Yes they should be banned, I will give you my experience.
I was admitted to a ward with maybe 6 female beds in it, and down a small hallway was an open male bed ward.
I presume we may have all used the same toilets and bathrooms, which were not clean, so I used lots of the hospitals wipes and sprays to clean them, each time I visited.

The wards were wide open, no doors, something like a squared off arch.
I think I only stayed one night, and was awake very late, I hadn’t expected or wanted to stay at all.

Some time in the night, I woke to see something odd in my face, a man’s penis, and I screamed and pushed him away.
Apparently he had dementia, and had been bothering the women in this ward for days.
Later on a lovely lady screaming, woke me, and this man now had his trousers or pj’s off and was sitting on the chair next to me, later again, he was opening my side cabinet of drawers.

All in the middle of the night.

I grabbed his arm on two occasions, and told him to get out, taking him out of the ward myself, trailing my blood transfusion roller trolley with me.

I did phone my husband and ask him to phone the police, but he wouldn’t.

Nothing was done, and no one in staff apologised.
The ladies on the ward were lovely, and before I was discharged, made sure one lady was getting drinks, and sips of water, when no staff were bothering to.
I think I was only there for one night, and it was hell.

No woman should have to suffer on a mixed ward.

Hospitals are hell, and I’ve stayed on a children’s ward overnight, where the raucous staff were screeching and playing games all night, running down the corridors, in between rooms full of sick children. This was the night staff, the day staff were lovely and quite normally behaved.

I wasn’t clapping for anyone in lockdown. These were two badly managed wards. Male patients should not be anywhere near or allowed to access female patients in hospital

People who say there are no mixed sex wards/bays - my dear mum was in a London NHS hospital recently.

She was in a room of four beds, two occupied by men and two by women. She was there over a week.

Bizarrely the two women's beds were diagonally opposite each other. So Mum had an old man in the bed next to her as well as another old man in the bed opposite.

No privacy. Everyone was using commodes behind their curtains.
It was absolutely grim.

Perhaps we should privatise the NHS, everybody would get a room to themselves and I’d get paid well over £100k.

They were banned in 2010. But they've never actually gone away.

www.nationalworld.com/health/hospitals-in-england-broke-single-sex-hospital-ward-rules-thousands-of-times-in-november-3546068

My friend was in an assessment ward for 2 days this week in Dundee and was in a mixed sex ward. It wasn't just the ward that was mixed sex but the bays too, she said there was an elderly gent who got confused and wandered into the women's toilets.

She didn't care that it was mixed sex but there is no way I would want to share with a man.

This isn't the correct attitude. I worked on a ward and we had to removed a young patient out from a bay and put her on the corridor to sleep ... for the night. Then the patient who came up from A&E took her bed.

I read the other thread and someone wrote we have an aging population and we don't have the infrastructure to cope with it which is very true. A lot of elderly are operated on till great ages these days.

It's break but I would rather mixed wards as a last resukt rather than people die because we are trying to keep male and female separated. Someone is paid to sort staffing crisis out so unless you know what really goes on ots easy to think why are wards being mixed!

Usually there are 4 side rooms on a ward maximum. What you describe is certainly not the norm at all 14 side rooms??

What speciality was this?

It is a matter of life and death. Your story is heartbreaking to read.

But your solution can't be serious put the nurses desk in one of the bays? Telephones ringing, private info being discussed, lights on all night unless you expect the nurses to write notes in the dark? No staff nurse could stay in the bay all day and night. You would need a nurse in each bay it's ludicrous at best.

Do you not know about the nurse strike? It's come about because of the poor staffing conditions.

This has answered the question - it's logistics.

@Skiingwithgin private rooms sounds like a night mare. It's fine for the young people who are able to use the toilet independently, get washed and feed themselves. However for someone needing full cares its dangerous and putting a patient which is a major falls risk in a private room is terrible also.

I don’t disagree, from a nursing/observation pov it sounds like it will be horrendous. From a privacy and infection control pov it will be amazing.
my cousin is a nurse at the new hospital in Liverpool, all their rooms are private but I think the walls are glass, I think it’s so nice they have an issue with discharges as people don’t want to go home!!!

You might think so, but the evidence suggests not.
Most are going home to live on their own.

Can I suggest that anyone who experiences a genuine mixed sex bay or suffers harm/is made uncomfortable about mixed sex accommodation does something about it? I don’t mean a visitor seeing you in a towel - in a fairly public area don’t wear just a towel. I mean sharing accommodation outside of the rules. Particularly in a mental health ward or unit.

Write to the CEO of your local trust with a formal complaint copied to the CEO of the Integrated Care System.
Fill in the CQC share your knowledge form on their website so that the scale of the problem can be seen and addressed. One person in a year won’t get much response but a trend showing certain hospitals let people down regularly will. Particularly if their own breach data doesn’t report it.
If you really want to make it an issue also contact NHSIE to share your concerns.

And a lot of elderly people should be operated on. Age does not mean you should reduce your independence because of cataracts or suffer the pain and disability of an untreated fractured neck of femur. Older people are entitled to treatment too.

I agree they shouldn't be a thing at all. The reality is that the NHS is fucked, there aren't enough beds and staff and people are dying because of this so sadly single sex wards are not a priority. Of course it doesn't make it right, but people have been happy to vote for a party who give zero fucks about the NHS, no one really does anything proactive to fight for it- perhaps we get what we deserve eh. Maybe things will be better under a new model.

moving forward, all new hospitals will be built with entirely private rooms (like the side rooms we have now)

Let's hope they sort staffing before that eh 😂

I think what they're saying is that som elderly people have complex surgery that extends their life but not the quality of it. There comes a tipping point where questions should be asked on the balance of whether a surgery is actually the right thing to do. Lots find this controversial though and believe in life beyond all else, no matter the effect on the person.

I agree with much of your sentiment but I also think "free at the point of use" is academic when the people who need it most cannot elbow their way into that point of use.

Its increasingly a glorified game of roulette trying to navigate badly managed business processes/conflicting appointment schemes/chaotic organisations and the people who miss out are the poorest, the oldest and the weakest.

I've spend a good amount of time in and out of hospitals over the past 5 years, with three elderly family members. I personally hate the idea of mixed wards, but do see how it becomes an option for NHS. My DF really struggled on a mixed ward, my aunts disliked it a lot, but managed it better than my father.

All rooms should be private! That's the solution.

I can't believe they built hundreds of new hospitals in the last 25 years but didn't make them private rooms.

I HATED having to share in the postnatal ward. All those visitors. Then other peoples screaming babies disturbing my sleep.

@CaronPoivre I'm just pointing to you that UK do a lot of complaining but don't really want to look after their own people nor visit them regularly. I never suggested to leave anybody in pain. However I don't think conversation around end of life is spoke about often enough. There's a huge different between having a fracture and needing a bypass at 90 years old. Some people here are very ignorant or what they are saying suits there own person needs. But like everything MONEY.... needs to be pulled from somewhere. Oh and staff too!

Mixed wards should be totally banned yes

Look at you thinking you know it all. Have you actually worked in a hospital or a care home?

There's lots of discharge wards opened right now and as the bad weather sets in it gets worse. These patients are elderly and have decreases indendance. They are essentially blocking beds through NO FAULT of their own. The system is poor and they simply are waiting on social needs despite being medically fit for discharge they are unable to go home for months on end.... its a sad situation.

Other countries with publicly funded health systems manage perfectly well with private rooms.

@SadOrWickedFairy classic case of thinking the grass is green isn't it? You don't really know what goes on as a whole unless you have lived in another Country so I won't speak on what I don't have personal experience on. We are living in UK so perhaps that what we should focus on, our own issues not others.

That’s horrific. I already hate hospitals. This has made me positively paranoid.