July 2017 Guardian: 'Mixed-sex wards endanger and humiliate women'
Catherine Bennett
(extract)
"The unacceptability of mixed-sex wards has been a cherished theme for every opposition since Tony Blair alighted, in 1996, on what is still, universally, agreed to be a valid cause of public upset.
Mixed wards, he said “cause indignity, upset people”. Subsequent studies, including a 2008 examination of nurse and patient perspectives, confirmed he had not exaggerated. There were patients, it confirmed, of both sexes and of varied ages, who “experienced a lack of privacy, worried about bodily exposure and felt uncomfortable”. Nurses entirely sympathised. “Mixed-sex accommodation,” it concluded, “is an unacceptable solution to bed shortages.”
Moreover, investigations showed, objections go far beyond the allegedly trivial ones, according to more disinhibited patients, of commodes, Carry On! gowns, proximity to men who might resemble, to pick one or two names at random, the Pimlico Plumber and twat-detector Charlie Mullins or the BBC star and famed beauty connoisseur, John Inverdale.
Patients and their relatives attested to intrusion, exhibitionism and leering from nearby beds, even with staff around. In 2009, Channel 4 discovered that almost two-thirds of sexual assaults by patients in hospitals (21 out of 33 in 2007/8), occurred in mixed-sex wards. Variations on Blair’s question to an evasive John Major – “Is it beyond the collective wit of the government and the health administrators to deal with that problem?” – was a reliable line in opposition outrage until Jeremy Hunt declared in 2014 that this indignity was “nearly”, or “virtually”, history.
Regulations introduced by the coalition government in 2010 compelled hospital trusts to report their figures for mixed-ward occupation, then fined them £250 per night for breaches. “We want to see the end of mixed-sex wards,” Nick Clegg said. “Everybody knows this has got to end.” As recently as his 2015 conference speech, a key part of Hunt’s claims to representing “the party of the NHS” was the unqualified triumph: “mixed sex wards eliminated”. The mysterious disappearance of mixed-sex elimination from the recent Tory manifesto, plus its own virtual elimination from the J Hunt repertoire, has in turn revived opposition testimonials to the distress underlying the statistics.
Norman Lamb, the Lib Dems’ health spokesman, described soaring mixed-sex breaches, as hospitals come under more pressure, as “an utter scandal and an affront to basic human dignity”.
If this trend continues, thousands more patients may, when parliament resumes, have occupied a bed a few feet from a stranger of the opposite sex, an arrangement explicitly deplored in the NHS constitution. It “commits” to patients “that if you are admitted to hospital, you will not have to share sleeping accommodation with patients of the opposite sex, except where appropriate”. As for providers, they are expected, according to the NHS handbook, “to eliminate mixed-sex accommodation except where it is in the best overall interest of the patient involved or respects their personal choice”. (continues)
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/30/mixed-sexed-wards-endanger-and-humiliate-women
remember that all of these statements by successive governments hide the deliberate lie that this was never single- sex accomodation