Mixed gender wards

[bigmamma]

What do you think about mixing male and female patients on the wards , and have any of you had experience of this ?

[GeordiePengy]

In some cases, they are unavoidable. For example, emergency admissions wards, where you are admitted to from A&E, are usually mixed because they can't allocate a set number of beds for each gender incase there is an excess of one gender admitted during a time episode. Admittedly not ideal, but generally speaking, most patients are moved to a specialist ward as soon as a bed is available.

I'm not sure if this latest media offering is related to mixed gender admission wards, or to specialist wards. Nowadays specialist wards are rarely mixed gender areas.

Most patients I come across in mixed gender admission wards are relatively cool with the situation, as they realise it's not for their entire admission and that they will be moved to a single sex area.

I guess if admission wards were made single sex, then with the current bed numbers this would result in increased time spent in A&E waiting for a bed. If you increased the bed numbers in an admission ward then you'd need more staff and buildings space. However, like all good plans this would fall down soon as the more beds you create the more demand is generated and the less likely it is that it'll remain single sex admission unit.

[bigmamma]

Hi geordie , yes , at our local hospital both the admissions ward and the high dependancy unit are mixed gender.
Having been on both several times I can say I didn't mind.Most of the time too ill to even notice.

[GeordiePengy]

Thats true, HDU and ITU/ICU are never going to be single sex areas. Like you say most are too ill to notice. You can't guarentee that you'll have equal numbers of each gender either.

Most people appreciate the situation and are pleased to be admitted and receiving treatment. There are som for whom this is just not enough....*sigh* :-(

[Lonnie]

I was in hospital some years ago, the last night was in the 'Day Ward' mixed sex, a very humiliating experience, they should never have been allowed, and should have been got rid of asap.

[bigmamma]

Hi lonnie , sorry you had a bad time of it :-)
I will tell you one time I was in the HDU and had a drip and oxygen , so couldn't jump out of bed . A rather confused stark naked man out of the bed next to me went wandering out of his bed . Next thing I saw was his bare bum heading for my face as he tried to sit on my bed. Then he turned round to try and climb in ............you can imagine what I was confronted with then !!!! The nurse came when I rang my buzzer . Although it was scary at the time the nurses and I laugh about it now . :-)

[Lonnie]

Hi bigmamma, your experience was far worse than mine, hindsight is always funny, and just reading about it brought a smile on, but the actual experience really must have been horrifying.
Mine was that I'd broken both my legs, and was just learning to walk on crutches, they'd put me in a bed at the far end of the ward, the loo was at the other end, and I had to negotiate it by myself,wearing just the hospital unisex gown, nedless to say, I toppled a couple of times, the staff left me to get up alone, my most private parts weren't that private after that, at least none of the ladies complained of shock.