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January 2, 2007

All mixed up about mixed sex wards

News from the Cutting Edge
"When I was having breast surgery I had 2 nights in a general surgical ward which had male and female patients. I didn't like it especially when the health care assistant left the door open when I was on the comode and a male patient walked past. I can see no benefits of mixed sex wards for the patient."
Unsurprisingly women don’t have a good word to say about mixed sex wards – which contrasts with men who rarely comment to us about this. And as the publicity about mixed sex wards intensifies there is the distinct sound of pigeons coming home to roost. Not only is the NHS having to deal with the fact that almost no one likes mixed wards, it is also having to correct a longstanding fudge about what ‘single sex wards’ actually mean.
Of course for patients a singe sex ward is just that – a ward where you won’t meet a patient of the opposite sex. But for managers single sex wards have usually meant single sex bays which allowed the stock of beds to be used at higher capacity.
When waiting lists were long, and MRSA rates low, the occasional embarrassment of singe sex bays was acceptable if it meant faster treatment (even though the trade off was rarely made explicit).
But now we know that MRSA rates rise sharply as bed occupancy exceed 85% and, as waiting lists fall, such slight of hand is increasingly unacceptable.
And sometimes the down right appalling happens as when Janet Street-Porter’s dying sister woke up to find a naked man masturbating beside her bed.

Things don’t have to get this bad for us to do something. Patient Opinion is currently emailing people who have posted opinions following an In Patients admission to find out what their experience of mixed sex wards and mixed sex bays was like. When the results are in we will post them up on the site and here on the blog. But in the mean time if you have any experiences about mixed sex wards you want to share then post them up as stories or email us.

Posted by Paul at January 2, 2007 4:35 PM