Mixed Sex Wards.

The government has maintained that these wards must be disposed of as soon as possible. The Nurses must do more to prevent patients from being admitted onto wards where their dignity will be compromised by sharing facilities with members of the opposite sex. 

Yesterday I had 5 male patients who were ready to go down to stepdown beds (the few that exist, we don't have enough) that were available at the tiny cottage hospital up the road. 

The consultant for these five patients determined that they were medically fit (they were) and that they needed further rehab and care while social services sorted out their home care/residential homes.   The acutely ill patients MUST to come to my hospital to get the care they need.  The cottage hospital is merely stepdown.  So we try to get stable patients who need looking after up to there.

I rang the bed manager to let him know that we have 5 men who could go to  Daisy Cottage hospital. 

"Excellent" he says.  Medical admissions is bursting at the seams with patients for you to take.  And Green ward over at Daisy has 5 beds!"

Too good to be true I thought.

So I rang Green Ward at Daisy Cottage Hospital to handover the 5 male stepdown patients.

As I started to handover the first patient, John Doe,  the Green ward Staff nurse informed me that they are nightingale and only have female beds and one bathroom.

They are under pressure to not mix up gender-designated accomadation.  The male ward at the cottage hospital was closed to admissions.

We got off the phone and I called the bed manager as the staff Nurse at the cottage hospital did not want to accept my 5 male patients. Or, at the very least, she wanted time to shuffle things about to get appropriate beds somewhere else for either her females or my males. There are only three wards there.

The bed manager was livid.  "Goddamn them, they will take those patients, and they will take them now, A&E is breaching.  I'll ring them.".

And 2 minutes later the cottage hospital nurse called me back to accept handover on my male stepdown patients. 

And my 5 male stepdown patients went to an open plan female ward.  The Nurse there told me that they are threatened with discipline for mix sexed wards and that whenever this happens they fill in incident forms but nothing ever gets done.

The government says that the ward nurses are responsible for maintaining dignity.  And that ward nurses are to take the blame when patient dignity is compromised.  They say that ward nurses must take the lead in avoiding mixed sex wards. 

I know that the bed manager sounds like the bad guy here, but he didn't have a choice.

The problem here is lack of facilites, poorly designed wards, and a health service that has been slashing the  number of acute and stepdown beds for years.   

If they want to avoid mix sex accomodation they need to start re-designing and building and they had better get off the Nurse's backs while they are at it.