Mixed-gender hospital rooms can be stressful

Re: “Health-care system fails on gender,” column, Feb. 25.

In his column, Lawrie McFarlane raised the matter of gender issues in health care. His article has prompted me to add another health-care issue that has concerned me for some time: The forced sharing of hospital rooms with members of the opposite sex, which creates added and unnecessary stress in a situation that obviously ought to be as stress-free as possible.

I am soon facing surgery, and dread being forced to be in a bed inches away from a male patient while undergoing intimate procedures and answering intimate questions without a modicum of privacy. This happened to an elderly aunt on more than one occasion. She also was distressed at having to use a bed pan and then a commode, separated from a male patient by only a thin curtain.

As McFarlane commented, there is a huge power imbalance between those who organize and provide medical care and the patient. Patients are at the mercy of a system that has become uncaring about gender sensitivities in favour of cost savings.

I realize that some patients do not object to this gender mixing, but there are many of us who do and are afraid to complain for fear of retaliation for being a “difficult patient.”

Understandably, emergency situations might require less-than-perfect responses to patient requests, but when the emergency is over, a patient’s need for same-gender accommodation should be honoured.

Norma LePage Nanaimo