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.

The idea of only single rooms terrifies me. One - because of confused patients and patients with dementia. And two - women would be so isolated. Imagine a man sneaking in and shutting himself in with a woman. No one would know. At least on a bay there are more people around to observe things. Think of all the people on this thread who have had old men expose themselves to them. Now imagine that happening in a side room with no one to see. Terrifying.

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

That is exactly the question that needs to be asked of those responsible for the UK NHS but the asking of it and the answer to it needs to be received without people within and outside the NHS getting defensive and stating that the NHS is about to be sold off, scaremongering and telling people to just be grateful for what they receive.

We are all aware that the NHS is understaffed and underfunded, but we can still have an adult debate about what is and isn’t acceptable in terms of women’s health care, and what sort of health service we should be pushing for.

We aren’t toddlers having tantrums, that’s a ridiculous analogy.

Many posters are saying that mixed sex wards are upsetting and in some cases traumatic, and evidence has been posted that women are being sexually assaulted and raped in hospitals. There are obviously no easy solutions to this problem but do we just go ‘oh ok then, we’ll accept the risks to women because at least we are getting some sort of care’ - is that the kind of health service we are working for?

I was on another thread a while ago where we were debating the lack of in-person GP appointments, and how difficult this is, and it is having a detrimental effect on elderly people in particular (who struggle to navigate the online / telephone appointments). Obviously there’s lots of reasons including Covid and shortage of staff but do we just accept it and go ‘ok yes elderly people will suffer physically and mentally for lack of in-person appointments but we can’t all have what we want, can we, stop whining!’. No - we know it’s not ideal and push the health service and Dept for Health to address the problem.

Why are other posters constantly trying to shut down the debate?
It has been quite eye-opening for me reading about the experiences on here.

Single rooms are actually safer statistically. Even with same staffing levels. There are all sorts of reasons why but suggest it and people talk about falls, loneliness and observation. It's actually because of building costs.

Relatives can stay and help provide care where there are single rooms. Lavatories are near at hand so easier to find and less risk of leaking when in transit which increases fall's risk. Less confusing as more usual bedroom setting. Nobody else creating disturbances so sleep is better and delirium reduced. Reduced cross infection risks and you can have a television on loud do you can hear it and remain engaged. You can sleep and wake to your own routine rather than an institutional one.

Single rooms are better but nobody is going to fund them.

I think the difference is that male visitors are fully clothed, should be sober and are not on strong meds that might disorientate them or suffering from dementia and wandering.
Day one and night one on a mixed ward I was too ill to notice much though I do remember hearing a man nearby ( maybe 2 -3 beds away) calling out a lot ( not aggressively but went on repeatedly) A nurse said the next morning she’d checked in on me several times, I had no recollection so anyone could have come round those curtains.
Day 2 feeling better and able to walk to shower and toilet I was aware of a man in his bed watching me walking across the ward a few times, but he could have just been bored.
As I began to feel better I did feel a bit creeped out that I’d been sleeping among strangers.

I was in a mixed room and all the other people in the other bays were male. (I am female). This was in March. It has happened pre-covid too. I kept pulling the curtain round me as I had had major abdominal surgery and I as wearing a nightie not pjs. One nurse kept opening the curtains saying she needed to see me. I just didn't want the rest of the world seeing my arse if the covers moved when I was sleeping. I was on lots of morphine and not myself at all. I felt very vulnerable. I also had to share the toilet and bathroom with them. It was awful.
The care I was given by nurses and doctors couldn't have been faulted. However, it was not nice being with men at that point in my recovery.

@Bluefluffyclouds

Far from attempting to stiffle the debate, I'm opening up the debate to what happens when single-sex wards (not bays) are full?

What happens to patients of either sex in that situation?

Are they/their families going to be happy with them left in corridors due to there being no beds in strictly single-sex wards (not bays)?

How are stats regarding alleged sexually inappropriate incidents/assaults of patients in hospitals categorised? For example, I (and many others) would not class catching sight of a hairy buttock as a sexual incident, but others on this thread obviously would be clutching their pearls.

Are the stats broken down, for example, to identify fellow-patients v visitors as perpetrators?

Are the stats broken down by percentage of incidents in single-sex wards v mixed wards v iIndividual rooms? What are the proportions of those stats?

How many incidents were perpetrated by men v women. As another poster stated, women on women-only wards can potentially be as big a danger to women as men can be in mixed sex wards.

It's really not as simple/straightforward as some appear to insist it is. I'd suggest all they are doing is demanding without thinking it through to a logical conclusion.

I'm pretty confident those in charge of these matters have considered these matters and many others of which I cannot even begin to comprehend.

So, yes, I think the tantruming toddler analogy is apt on this occasion.

Another incident when my actual room was all women but the ward was mixed had a man having some sort of psychotic episode. It was the middle of the night and he kept trying to run into other rooms and pull patients drips etc out. That was really terrifying. I had 20 staples holding me together and could barely move. I was scared. They did manage to get security but really there wasn't enough staff on the ward to cope with that.

I can not agree with this. I have been in nursing nearly 20 years and not being able to observe patients is a HUGE issue. I've found people dead in their beds. I've found people on the floor. I've found people collapsed in the bathrooms. All in side rooms. Side rooms only suit patients who are not very ill, are relatively mobile, independent, or have someone with them to monitor them. But in specialities, like respiratory, neuro, geriatric medicine, that is not the norm. Then there are the practicalities of equipment in those rooms. Hoists, chairs. And have you ever seen a cardiac arrest in a side room? People climbing over each other. Throwing stuff at each other. There is no space.

I'd like to see which kind of wards they got their statistic from.

I nearly died in a side room when I was in my 20’s, I was bed bound and nil by mouth, I’m a type one diabetic. I had been left alone for hours on end, I had no access to water and my buzzer had been placed where I couldn’t reach it. There is no way I would ever agree to go in a sideroom or ever agree for a loved one to go in one unless they were able to have someone with them 24/7.

That is about poor care and not about a single room.

If I wasn’t in a single room I would have been able to raise the alarm and verbally let staff know that I likely needed glucose. Not only that, they would have noticed that I was unconcious on the floor.

I work in a hospital and we are not allowed bays of mixed sex patients. So if we are full and have one female bed become empty, if we are asked to take a male patient we can't.

I'm in Wales, so not sure if it's different.

I'm in Wales.

There’s definitely been dads/ partners on wards that have been copping a look - women partially clothed, breastfeeding, trying to change. It’s not just old men with dementia we need protecting from.

It should be banned!
Luckily enough our local hospital it's not mixed wards and no partners can stay on the post natal wards. In fact, they're not actually allowed to stay around until you're in active labour past visiting hours (9-8). Once you're in active labour they can be phoned to come back in.

Great post clouds. It's got to the stage where I assume that people unable to debate without using insults to shut down debate not only have limited arguments to use but are over invested in ensuring that women lose safe single sex spaces.

And, of course, women are immune to psychotic episodes i.e. that sort of incident could not possibly occur in a single-sex ward.

This is a major issue, people assuming incidents/events are sex-based when, in the real world, women can have psychotic episodes, and lesbian/gay women can spend as much time (if not more) leering at women on single-sex wards/bays as men who may not even be doing so but are automatically suspected of doing so by virtue of their genitals.

The same with 'inappropriate' men with Dementia. Seriously, you should see / hear some of the behaviour/language from my partner's mother (who is diagnosed with Dementia) when she is unwell enough to be hospitalised.

Lesbians leering? 😂
Have you ever met a lesbian?

To be clear - you said "as much as, if not more"

That's just bloody ridiculous

Yes. I have been propositioned twice, by different lesbians. My friends had noticed the interest I was attracting i.e. leering, whilst I had not. I was completely off-guard when subsequently approached/propositioned.

Also, as a teenager, I was touched-up by an elderly woman who ran her fingers across the emblem on my t-shirt whilst saying the phrase within the emblem 'la petite fleur' whilst saying that yes, I was indeed a 'petite fleur'. Creepy as fuck, really.

So, yes, I have encountered lesbians.

...and you think women encounter creepy men fewer than three times in their life?

Because we spend so little on healthcare.

www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/taxes-and-health-care-funding-how-does-the-uk-compare

In fact, when you look at how little is spent, it’s actually amazing what they do. Meanwhile all the other money can be frittered away to Tory cronies.

I'm sure other posters, who are much less invested in seeing the world through a prism of men bad/women good, will have grasped the point I was making: sexually inappropriate behaviour towards women is not the sole preserve of men.

I don't really give a flying fig about the sex of the person being sexually inappropriate, it's the inappropriateness that matters.

It just seems to me, women on here are unconcerned that other women can be, and are, sexual predators.

I previously worked in a bed management/patient flow role
Essentially it comes down to swing or mixed wards being the most useful

there are not constantly an equal number of male and female patients
mixed wards meet needs better

on X day there are 30 beds available in Y hospital
21 females need a bed and 10 males need a bed

the 30 beds are split across 2 wards
in a hospital with only male and female wards say there are 15 male and 15 female beds
that hospital has to look at other providers for six patients whilst having four vacant beds.this has a hefty price tag
if those beds are mixed only one extra bed is needed.