Single sex accommodation
Same Sex Accommodation - Safeguarding your privacy and dignity
Maintaining privacy and dignity for our patients is a key priority and over the past year we have invested over £1.2 million to improve the ‘patient experience’ on our wards.
One of our most important actions has been to ensure that men and women staying in our hospital do not have to share their accommodation with patients of the opposite sex. Being comfortable in your surroundings is a key part of maintaining dignity and our Trust Board is fully committed to eradicating mixed sex accommodation.
In January 2009, the Secretary of State for Health announced an intensive drive to all but eliminate mixed sex accommodation. Hospital Trusts are now required to publish a ‘declaration of compliance’ stating whether or not they are able to declare the virtual elimination of mixed sex accommodation and its continued delivery. We have carried out a ward improvement programme to help address this. To date we have refurbished six wards across the Trust to ensure they comply with the single sex standard.
The work we have undertaken means that our patients on mixed sex wards can now be accommodated in single sex bays, with dedicated bathroom and toilet facilities. Arranging patient’s accommodation in this way (using single sex bays rather than single sex wards) means we can still provide the specialist clinical care patients need.
Of course we have always tried to ensure patients are accommodated in bays of the same sex, but this work – which has included building work, refurbishments and introducing additional bathroom and toilet facilities – will make this much easier and we are confident we will have eliminated mixed sex accommodation in all but the most difficult of circumstances by April 2010.
Of course there are some areas and occasions where this isn’t possible and a patient’s clinical need overrides their need for single sex accommodation, such as in our intensive care and high dependency units. In these circumstances our staff work hard to ensure that patients, while they are receiving what is often life-saving treatment, are put at their ease and maintain their dignity as much as possible.
If it is absolutely impossible to provide separate accommodation in rare and extenuating circumstances, then our staff will be expected to rectify the situation as soon as possible, whilst safeguarding the individuals’ dignity and keeping the patient informed about why this has happened and what we are doing to address it and how long this will take. These situations are taken very seriously and each case is investigated to ensure we learn from the experience. Every breach of our ‘single sex standard’ is reported to the Trust board.
Our target is to ensure no patient is accommodated in mixed sex bays (apart from the exceptions stated above) after 1st April 2010. It’s that important to us that we work hard to get this right. The Trust Board's delivering single sex accommodation declaration is available here.
Maintaining privacy and dignity for our patients is a key priority and over the past year we have invested over £1.2 million to improve the ‘patient experience’ on our wards.
One of our most important actions has been to ensure that men and women staying in our hospital do not have to share their accommodation with patients of the opposite sex. Being comfortable in your surroundings is a key part of maintaining dignity and our Trust Board is fully committed to eradicating mixed sex accommodation.
In January 2009, the Secretary of State for Health announced an intensive drive to all but eliminate mixed sex accommodation. Hospital Trusts are now required to publish a ‘declaration of compliance’ stating whether or not they are able to declare the virtual elimination of mixed sex accommodation and its continued delivery. We have carried out a ward improvement programme to help address this. To date we have refurbished six wards across the Trust to ensure they comply with the single sex standard.
The work we have undertaken means that our patients on mixed sex wards can now be accommodated in single sex bays, with dedicated bathroom and toilet facilities. Arranging patient’s accommodation in this way (using single sex bays rather than single sex wards) means we can still provide the specialist clinical care patients need.
Of course we have always tried to ensure patients are accommodated in bays of the same sex, but this work – which has included building work, refurbishments and introducing additional bathroom and toilet facilities – will make this much easier and we are confident we will have eliminated mixed sex accommodation in all but the most difficult of circumstances by April 2010.
Of course there are some areas and occasions where this isn’t possible and a patient’s clinical need overrides their need for single sex accommodation, such as in our intensive care and high dependency units. In these circumstances our staff work hard to ensure that patients, while they are receiving what is often life-saving treatment, are put at their ease and maintain their dignity as much as possible.
If it is absolutely impossible to provide separate accommodation in rare and extenuating circumstances, then our staff will be expected to rectify the situation as soon as possible, whilst safeguarding the individuals’ dignity and keeping the patient informed about why this has happened and what we are doing to address it and how long this will take. These situations are taken very seriously and each case is investigated to ensure we learn from the experience. Every breach of our ‘single sex standard’ is reported to the Trust board.
Our target is to ensure no patient is accommodated in mixed sex bays (apart from the exceptions stated above) after 1st April 2010. It’s that important to us that we work hard to get this right. The Trust Board's delivering single sex accommodation declaration is available here.
Last updated09 Apr 2010