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.

Or my grandfather, or my son, or my mate Dave who is lovely. Just the same as I wouldn't expect any adult to be put on a children's ward.
Because anyone who is vulnerable for any reason should have adequate protection.

Are you really challenging a woman who's reporting her experiences of being flashed at (indecent exposure) and telling her she's got it wrong Trez1510 ? Have you not heard of Mumsnet's "We believe you" campaign ?

I'm tempted to report that post Trez1510 but actually it's worth leaving up to demonstrate the type of hostility that women receive when they dare demand safe single sex spaces or disclose rape and sexual abuse.

It’s immaterial what the intention was. Whether or not it was intentional, it would make any woman feel very vulnerable and unsafe. I would be really traumatised.

This happened years ago too.nothing was done.nothing changed,services are in fact worse.
if woman are not cared about in these situations,mental illness is below the below of the below

It's unbelievable that, a woman is the victim of indecent exposure, and people are arguing about whether it was 'intentional' or not.

There should not be mixed wards - it's as simple as that. Without mixed wards there would be no risk of this happening, intentionally or otherwise, and we simply should not be exposed to that risk.

Exactly. Private can't be all that it's cracked upto be because when the shit hits the fans they come back to the NHS like the rest.

It's laughable.

I think people are mixing up bays with wards.

Bays are single sex

Wards have to be mixed sex (apart from gynae and ante/post natal) because of the demands, but the bays within them are single sex.

A ward can have 30+ beds in them and then the bays within them have about six. Bays are single sex and should remain so.

I'm not mixing them up. There is no barrier between the different bays and areas such as the nurses' station are a free for all. You get men all over the ward.

Mine was a bay. MAU as I said upthread, is apparently exempt from the rule as you are only "supposed" to be there for a short period (and then either discharged or given a bed on a ward). I was in for a week, there were no beds to move me to.

My dad, fil, brother, bil, husband, male friends would all rather be monitored in a corridor than placed in a female bay for two reasons (1) they are decent people who would be horrified at causing distress to women and (2) their own privacy and dignity.

Whenever discussion on the NHS comes up one of the things always mentioned by the public is their want for single sex wards, it comes up time and time and time again, politicians promise it because they know the public want it and the response from those working for the NHS, some posters on here is just be grateful you got a bed at all or go private. No, I pay taxes for the NHS (and yes, I do) why is it deemed such a crime to want and expect decent standards that consider, at the bare minimum, patients need for safety, dignity and privacy?

@andweallsingalong There were several reasons for empty wards in purpose built hospital annexes. One was that a lot (as in Portsmouth) were built with PFI money (like some schools) mostly under Labour. Unfortunately no one checked the contracts which meant huge sums were needed from the hospital to pay off the contract which meant the wards needed to be closed.

And if you have a ward you can't afford with nurses you can't afford you can't use the ward. Then in came the idea every nurse needed to have a uni degree which many couldn't afford to take on, Tories removing their bursaries and then reinstating them at a fifth of the previous rate. Leading to a shortage of nurses let alone doctors.

Do you think everyone can afford private healthcare, or…?

You have a right to this but there are some situations that make this impractical like; intensive care units.

I really, really don’t care. I was at the end of a 2 week hospital stay which had been hit by a terrorist in the middle of my time there. I needed my husband and he stayed at the hospital’s suggestion as I just wasn’t coping. Couldn’t have cared less if any of the other women didn’t like it or if any of you lot here don’t like it. None one of them stayed as long as me or experienced what I’d experienced in the days after their babies were born. We were on the same ward but in a private room, it was fine.

There's no way of operating the hospital without mixing though. Which part of that are you failing to see?

If your relative needed a bed what would you rather?

They need to segregate the mixed wards, by adding in doors, walls etc.

you cannot safely monitor an acutely ill cardiac patient in a corridor, you need the actual cardiac monitor which has to be linked up to the screens, staff who can read them and respond when there are problems. a patient being monitored in a corridor will probably only get a few sets of observations.

There's no way of operating the hospital without mixing though. Which part of that are you failing to see?

And yet they cope perfectly well without doing so in other countries.

I think hospitals worldwide will have mixed acute wards like ccu, hdu, itu, admissions, a&e and some may not have wards at all

@Alacarde that would mean bays. @SadOrWickedFairy the issue is about here in the UK not else where. Here in UK there's barely enough staff for the wards.

Sometimes 4 people are grouped together and moved around is because they have dementia, people here are assuming that a man deliberately flashed himself but how can you be sure of his medical history? How can the staff see properly in sedregrated bays though?

It's no skin off my nose I have nothing against people wanting to feel at ease whilst their in hospital and unwell but these ideas have lost sight of logic.

As for the other ridiculous comment about being nursed on the corridor. What about oxygen supplies? What if the patient needed CPR?

I am aware it is about the UK, the question is why is the UK NHS unable to do so when other countries are?

We've had single rooms are dangerous when the evidence in countries with them is that they are not, we now have wards must be mixed and bays when it suits because it's impossible to do otherwise and yet other countries manage it. It is all just excuses, the easy option, there is no real will to change even though it is what the public say they want and is routinely promised by politicians.

@HappyHamsters @Neanov

Precisely. Posters on here are looking at the issue from one side only i.e. it's fine for men to be nursed in corridors to prevent mixed wards. Their men will, apparently, be uniformly behind this nonsense with no concern for their own well-being preferring to put the privacy of women above their own comfort/ appropriate nursing. lol

Can't see those posters (or their men folk) being equally happy with a vulnerable, disabled female being left in a corridor to be monitored because all the strictly female wards are full.

There is a serious lack of consequential thinking being displayed on this thread. It's like a 2yo tantrum 'I want!! I want!! I WANT!!!'

The reason we don't give in to 2yo tantrums is because, almost exclusively, their demands are ludicrous, dangerous and against their own best interests.

@SadOrWickedFairy I have never worked in a hospital around the world so I don't have enough factual knowledge or personal knowledge. I live and work in UK so what I can share with you and you don't want to seem to listen IS

Some patients are falls risks also and there's not enough staff.

So please explain to me how other hospitals around the world do it?

We have significant staffing issues in the NHS. We can barely adequately staff the bays. Single rooms would be amazing if there was safe staffing.