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 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 agree with these points @C8H10N4O2 . Any attempt to correct these issues though is met with outrage and cries of The NHS is going to be privatised - it will be like the USA - the fear brought on by that statement shuts down any reasonable and measured discussion, those that shout it may want to reflect that for the poorest, oldest and weakest the NHS is already resembling the American model.

When I was in charge overnight on the cardiac unit I was asked to take an acute male into the the female bay as it was the only emoty monitored bed in the hospital, I agreed but got all sorts of shit and threats to report me from the other staff. It was only for a few hours as I knew a sideroom was coming up in the morning and he had the curtains drawn, sometimes you have to make a decision you know will upset some people.

I have lived in other countries and received healthcare in them, some who don't even make it onto the list of the G7, so I do know what I'm talking about and these countries provide excellent care with single, private rooms and respect the dignity of their patients.

Go private then if it's so shit.

I’ve seen both bay nursing and single room nursing from a staff and patient perspective when I had 2 c sections.

I worked in a very new NHS hospital ( UK city) with mostly single rooms for all specialties. It is very clear that single rooms are better for infection control. They prevent Covid outbreaks in hospital. Side rooms are also good for younger people and those with robust mental health who are able to call for help if needed.

They are not good for older people, those with mental health issues ( they get very lonely and have no stimulation) or anyone very sick. Even when I had my c sections I saw that when you are in a single room you are out of sight out of mind.

You need higher staffing levels to keep checking every room and staff all did a very high step count as the wards were much bigger .

I don't understand why so many people hold up the NHS as a bastion of brilliance when so many patients and families are failed.

@SadOrWickedFairy very well said

I can bet the men who accidentally flashed where not deliberately flashing. Hospital gowns are just not dignified. I suspect if you told the men they would be mortified

Add to that hospital overly warm, patient more than lightly running a temp.

Patients in bays really should not be mixed how hard is it at least to split an area up with a curtain.

I'm sure many people who can do go private. That's the reason I'm still in my job, the private healthcare. The NHS isn't the amazing envy of the world that some people would like to think unfortunately.

I was out in a single room after having had a very traumatic birth. The nurses often forgot to bring me food and just ignored me.

Typical ill thought out answer.

How about sorting out the abuse @redbigbananafeet? Happy for the poor, weak, elderly and vulnerable people to be abused and stripped of their dignity because they can't afford to access private health care?

Do you not believe everyone, whatever their financial circumstances, should have the right to access publicly funded healthcare that does not abuse them?

They also save thousands of lives… like my mother and my auntie.

It’s not perfect no but it’s not going to be when you have idiots that go there for minor reasons or when it’s trying to fund everything.

Id also much rather be on a mixed sex ward and get better then not be on a ward at all.

Go private or go home if you are not happy with it.

These threads fuck me off - not because I don’t think everyone deserves single sex wards - but people twist the statistics to suit their lives.
The most vulnerable women of all are on mental health wards and we need to acknowledge that women are at their most unsafe here. The risk is much higher on a mental health ward but we don’t care about ‘those people’.

Those who want single sex wards (and I do!), curious if you support men being banned from staying overnight on antenatal wards. I never felt more vulnerable that having to poop on a commode with a thin curtain between me and the husband of the woman next to me after giving birth. I would ban men from them too.

Life overall can't of been so good. Otherwise you would be still living their. It's easy to critize and tell your story when you have been a patient for a few weeks. That really doesn't compare to working in a hospital yourself for years.

I can see the dignity point and I absolutely agree with those posters however in reality some of these ideas are madness it's just not practical.

Life overall was certainly good and I was a patient for more than a few weeks and I'm not going into (a) why I am back in the UK or (b) the reasons why I had to access healthcare. All I can say in those countries where I did access it it was far more efficient and professional, citizens in those countries would not tolerate the standards people in the UK are expected to and then bang pots and pans in gratitude.

The NHS has garnered some kind of idol status that puts it above and beyond any criticism, those that do criticise are told to just go private instead of a reasoned discussion about unacceptable standards and what can be done to improve the standards, it's a take what you are given and be grateful attitude and that's what leads to poor care and the numerous scandals.

You just can't seem to accept that other countries manage to provide excellent publicly funded healthcare without stripping patients of their privacy and dignity, that they manage not to have patients routinely falling out of bed, or falling on the way to the toilet.

It's proved not to be madness and more that practical in other countries, you are wedded to the NHS vision and version in the UK, do you ever wonder why other countries do not imitate or implement it if it is so damn world beating?

WTF

You were so very, very wrong to do that (according to the zealots on this thread anyway) because, you know, some pearl-clutcher may have accidentally caught sight of a hairy buttock.

It genuinely sounds like some on this thread would rather have men lined-up on trollies in corridors to preserve their own sense of security. Men who, of course, are not their fathers, husbands, sons etc. (Just watch them 'kick-off' in that particular scenario and their zealotry towards women-only spaces dissolve like snow off the proverbial. Either that or insist the hospital magically acquire elastic walls into which fully staffed, male-only spaces could be inserted lol!)

Equally, I seriously doubt they'd be so happy to be on a trolley, in a corridor, whilst there were beds available in (their demanded) male-only wards.

If this place truly reflects the thinking of the wider female population, then consequential thinking and logic needs to be included in the curriculum pretty damned quickly!

I wouldn't care about the sex of people on my ward, because I'd be too busy finding the whole experience agonising.

Sleep is SO fundamental to so much of our health, yet we still can't design hospitals that allow at least semi private arrangements.

It's basic economics. It's a way of maximizing available beds Vs need. I agree it's not ideal but it's understandable

My logic is just fine, thank you. 🙄

As a disabled woman and rape victim I do not wish to be left in a place with unknown men where I am vulnerable, especially given that I could not fight off any potential attacker due to my disability. I do not consent to being intentionally exposed to by the men who are there. This was not an accidental flash of arse, it was on one particularly memorable occasion, a man sat up in the bed opposite me in the middle of the night with his legs spread, naked from the waist down. In semi-darkness, with no one around, while the rest of the patients were sleeping.

How do you know he intentionally exposed himself to you? Did he say something? Did he look directly at you whilst he did so? Was he even awake? How hard did you have to peer in the 'semi darkness' to discern he was naked and his legs were spread?

Meanwhile, in your world, either you or your father/husband/son are lying on a trolley in a corridor, barely monitored, because you believe a man intentionally exposed himself to you. 🙄

On maternity wards the issue is that the babies tend to not fancy sleeping and would rather feed. The other adults did not affect my sleep, other babies a bit and my own baby was the major sleep destroyer. Was easier at home with DH to pass the baby, change their nappy and hold them so all I had to do was feed.

Yes he was awake and looking at me. It was the middle of the night, but surely you know that a hospital room is never actually "dark, dark"?

And I said already, I wasn't allowed on a trolley - so no being left on a trolley in a corridor for me. 🤷🏼‍♀️ I wasn't allowed as far as the corridor, as provision for disabled people is shite

And yes, I'd rather my dad be monitored in a corridor than have him foisted upon vulnerable women without their consent.