Toilets in a hospital waiting room

[TreeGarden93]

I went to a hospital yesterday, as I regularly do (as a cancer patient).

The new building has a very busy waiting area, approx 200 people capacity and is often full. The toilets there I think are quite unusual in that they are not single sex, as they have shared was basins, but have they do have men/women toilet cubicles once you are inside.

Diagram and photo attached.

The toilet cubicles are fully enclosed with lockable doors. The wash basins are all open plan, used by both men and women.
The first 3 toilets have the traditional woman picture on the door, the last 3 toilets have a male picture. The toilets are very busy and people queue by the sinks, with men having to walk past the women as their toilets are at the end of the row.

I’m not a toilet expert… but I don’t like them. They have single toilets, but then shared spaces wash basins.
I would choose to avoid any toilet that I had to share an intimate space with men. I would prefer single sex toilets.
As you can imagine, all cancer patients may have particular and urgent needs when using a bathroom and washroom that may need privacy and sensitivity.

I don’t think this meets the criteria for being uni-sex? I thought unisex sex toilets had to have wash facilities within the cubicle.

This is a new building… opened last year to much fanfare, so they have been purposely designed this way. I suspect the male and female signs have been added as an after thought to try and direct men to use specific toilets.

How the hell is this happening with newish builds? I don't understand why toilet provision cannot be standardised in every hospital in the country. But that doesn't seem to happen.

I refer the hon mem to my earlier answer... sorry, I get delusions of grandeur when it comes to UK Building regs re toilets😂

The set-up you describe sounds wrong: unisex 'universal' toilets are supposed to have handwashing facilities inside, there should not be shared handwashing facilities.

1.16 There should be no shared hand-washing facilities in corridors, circulation spaces or shared spaces outside universal toilets of Type A or Type B.

The idea of the 'universal' toilet is not to mix men and women together as they use the toilet and wash their hands - the idea is to enclose the whole er... process in a single, individual space.

So men and women use the unisex facilities consecutively, but they are not supposed to be forced to mix at any time, e.g. washing their hands. The specs are very clear about it being an enclosed space for private, individual use, including handwashing.

This sounds a bit conspiracy-theory-ish, but I'm beginning to think that the intended design and layout has been subverted into forcing women, like your mum, DiscoBob, to use toilet facilities in proximity to men, an absolute denial of anything even resembling a women-only space.

Is there also a hint of malice in venues removing women's toilets [not, apparently men's...] to instal unisex toilets?

All this disruption, distress and expense, let it not be forgotten, to placate the tiny percentage of the population who are transgender and who refuse to use the toilets designated for people of their sex.

Thank you for this very detailed response. It's very interesting. And bad the hospitals don't comply. Could it be to force women into spaces that contain men when they shouldn't? It certainly seems that way.

Dreadful layout and not particularly safe. I’d feel uneasy going in there alone.

Its "cheap"

Say You have 1000 people using rhe hospital at any given time.
Break that into floors and siting in an area.
You need provision near each group say 100 seats

You could have
• 100 women 0 men in a cervical cancer clinic or
• 0 women 100 men in a prostate cancer clinic
(Ignoring family/ supporters)
To provide service you need twice the amount of uints if you plan for single sex service provision.

Its also "fashionable" to ignore why the laws around toilet provision exist.

This set uo is illegal toilets can only be unisex if the sink is IN the lockable room that has floor to ceiling walls and door. If there is a row of cubicles with separate sinks as shown then they must be single sex facilities ie no male cubicles just female ones or the opposite. A single sex facilities cannot have unisex facilities in the same room.

Wow thank you all for so much information, I truly appreciate it! Especially @MarieDeGournay and @Keeptoiletssafe.

i am not in a position to do much over the next 2 weeks, school holiday plans etc, but I’m going to pick this up again once the kids go back to school in early September. That also happens to be when my next visit will be to the hospital. What a happy coincidence! I can do more toilet research 🧐.
never thought I’d say that.

there are so many valid points raised here, not least patient safety from many angles (access, accidents, safeguarding, medical needs, privacy etc)

where might one start with a letter to raise concerns and to whom?

All the features that make a toilet unsafe! None of the features that provide adequate privacy!

They really have outdone themselves!

I wouldn’t feel safe using those toilets. In a hospital of all places! Shocking

As others have said, they’re wrong in just about every way it’s possible for them to be wrong. Do they at least have red cords in them in case anyone gets into difficulties inside them? Obviously cords don’t help if you collapse suddenly and/or fall and block the door from opening but it’s another thing to check.

AND presuming that some bored able-bodied user has not practiced their knot-tying skills on the red cord so it is now out of reach of anyone lying on the floor.

I speak from experience - at one of my jobs I could see that the nearest adapted toilet to my desk was regularly used by a number of able-bodied male colleagues, and I used to go in regularly to untangle the red cord and restore it to usefulness, while thinking ' FFS will somebody give them a macrame starter kit for Xmas!'😡

Timely to mention this again:
https://www.euansguide.com/get-involved/safer-toilets/

Obviously the problem with cords is that someone has to be conscious or not too scared in the moment to pull them, and someone has to respond to them.
I have heard on more than one occasion that they were used for self harm.

They also shouldn’t snap!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqjvnkzgr1no