Mixing men and women in wards didn't seem to be a problem when I was in hospital six years ago, but it is now. The British government has just promised to end mixed-sex wards by the end of the year, and NSW Health has responded to a Rees government promise to do so by saying it will where possible.
The Labor government promise was in response to the Garling Report into NSW hospitals, which recommended last year that the mixing of men and women in wards other than those for intensive or emergency care cease forthwith. Easier said than done, I'd say, in a hospital system already seriously stressed. Imagine the inefficiencies of having one ward half full of women and the next ward half full of men.
The Garling Report said women felt vulnerable, fearful and distressed in mix wards, and the Council on the Ageing chipped in to say that patients found these wards embarrassing and uncomfortable and that some patients feared sexual assault. At about the same time a Victorian women's network reported that up to 70 per cent of women in mixed wards endured physical or sexual abuse. The garbage women expect us to believe!
I didn't feel awkward about sharing a ward with women, and they had no reason to feel awkward about sharing a ward with me, nor do I feel awkward about sharing the workplace or public transport with women. But I have often felt that I am compromising the privacy of other patients, men and women, when visiting a friend in a hospital ward, so perhaps, if the argument for same-sex wards is valid, visitors should be barred from wards containing patients of the opposite sex.
I'm inclined to the view that the very same women who've badgered us into submission with claims for equal treatment have now come to believe that their privacy is more precious than ours.
What's been your experience of mixed-sex wards? Are you one of the 70% who've been abused?
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