I’ve seen the true horror of mixed wards – and I know who’s to blame

LATE at night, the ward was in darkness except for one lamp that illuminated a truly awful scene. Crumpled on the floor was an elderly woman, her arm horribly twisted as she hugged it close to her body. She cried out in pain whenever the nurse tried to move her.

The other patients were craning their necks to see what was happening.

I was a junior doctor at the time and had been called because a nurse had heard a commotion. After investigating, she’d found the lady lying on the floor and a strange man asleep, oblivious, in her bed.

The story that unfolded convinced me that mixed-sex wards were not just an indignity, but a serious safety issue that needed to be outlawed with immediate effect.

Nightmare

Returning from the loo, a confused patient in his late 60s had got into bed with the woman — nearly 90, under 5ft and crippled with osteoporosis — who was sleeping opposite him.

When she screamed, he threw her out of the bed. In the fall she dislocated her shoulder and fractured her hip and pelvis. She was left unable to walk again.

This happened more than ten years ago, but it still haunts me. And — despite endless promises from politicians and tireless campaigning from the Daily Mail — little has changed to stop men and women sharing the same wards, and ensuring that patients don’t suffer from this sort of nightmare.

In fact, the problem seems to be getting worse. As the Mail reported yesterday, nearly 4,500 people were forced to share mixed- sex wards last year, a 70 per cent rise on the year before.

Of course, what happened to my elderly patient is an extreme example of how things can go wrong on a mixedsex ward. Yet, with research showing that two-thirds of all attacks occur on these wards, it is far from an isolated incident.

However, it’s not just the safety issue that’s important here — mixed- sex wards are dehumanising and degrading.

Understandably, many people find it embarrassing and undignified being cared for in this sort of environment where patients have little option but to walk around in front of the opposite sex in flimsy hospital gowns or their pyjamas.

This issue of decency is especially relevant for the older generation and bed- bound patients who — without the privacy of even using a bathroom — are expected to perform all bodily functions in front of others.

One patient explained to me how she couldn’t use a commode as the beds on either side of hers were occupied by men and she was too embarrassed.

‘It is difficult here, doctor,’ she said, apologetically. ‘ The only man who has ever seen me naked is my husband.’

In these circumstances, being unwell and stuck in hospital goes from an unpleasant experience to an unbearable one.

Despite all the promises from politicians over the past two decades, little has been done to prevent the daily indignity of mixed-sex wards.

Tony Blair, in Opposition in 1996, made a call to eradicate them. The pledge to do so was made in 2001 and again in 2006.

Finally, under Gordon Brown, Lord Darzi, a surgeon and health minister at the time, admitted it was an aspiration that could not be met.

No action followed, but the issue has refused to go away. The Coalition introduced rules that meant that from April 2011 all NHS hospitals were expected to treat patients in single-sex areas, with hospitals failing to comply facing fines.

So, what has happened since? Have mixed- sex wards been consigned to the history books? Have they heck.

After a staggering 20 years of talk, we are still nowhere near sorting out the problem.

It is a disgrace that — in nearly a quarter of a century — we still can’t find a way of treating patients in a dignified and safe setting.

On a day- to- day level, I think that these wards are part of a wider malignancy in the NHS where people are routinely dehumanised.

An example that particularly grates is the adoption of ‘assumed intimacy’ — where everyone from nurses to the cleaners feels at liberty to refer to patients by their first name as though they are longlost friends.

On a larger scale, mixed-sex wards are a symptom of a larger problem affecting the NHS. All the evidence shows the main factor hindering the introduction of single-sex wards is bed occupancy rates.

In a survey conducted by trade magazine the Nursing Times, two-thirds of nurses identified shortage of beds as the main reason for people being treated in mixed- sex wards during peak demand.

Hypocrisy

In most hospitals in Britain, bed occupancy rates are close to 100 per cent — compared with about 85 per cent in many European countries.

When hospitals have to operate a one- in, one- out policy, there are bound to be difficulties in allocating patients to beds on the basis of their gender.

I have frequently seen patients put in beds alongside the opposite gender because it was the only space available.

What’s interesting is that bed occupancy rates have also been shown to be the single biggest factor in hospitalacquired infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile, a bowel infection.

The only way to improve the situation and decrease the bed occupancy rates down to safe levels is stopping ward closures and actively increasing the number of beds across the NHS.

This will make bed allocation on the basis of gender easier, as well as improving infection rates. Thus, single- sex wards equals safer hospitals.

It is appalling hypocrisy that Labour have jumped on these statistics about infections, citing them as evidence that hospitals are overcrowded, because the situation is a direct result of their policies.

Disaster

It was Labour that introduced the hugely costly and problematic Private Finance Initiative that saw so many hospitals pulled down and replaced with new hospitals that were run by private companies.

On average, a PFI hospital has 30 per cent fewer beds than the one it replaced.

The decision to decrease beds is taken simply because it makes the hospital cheaper to run, increasing profits for the company in charge of the hospital.

This scheme has proved an absolute disaster for patients.

Despite warnings from doctors, nurses and academics, the Government pushed ahead and forced NHS trusts to accept PFI deals. Staff saw the number of beds available plummet almost overnight.

We warned them that it would push bed occupancy rates to dangerous levels, infections would increase and it would make single- sex wards an impossibility. Did they listen? Of course not.

So how dare politicians continue to claim to support single- sex only wards in the NHS when they push through policies that mean it can never be a reality?

The problem of mixed- sex wards can be laid fairly and squarely on the doorstep of politicians.

Meanwhile, doctors and nurses have to pick up the pieces and, most importantly, patients have to endure a dangerous and undignified environment.