Work under way on £10m plan to eradicate mixed sex wards
Jun 26 2009 by Alison Dayani, Birmingham Post
More than £10 million is being pumped into ensuring all NHS hospitals in the Midlands have separate wards for men and women within the next year to avoid Government fines.
West Midlands Health Authority is leading the programme to eliminate mixed sex wards across hospitals after the Department of Health warned it would penalise all trusts who did not comply by the next financial year in April 2010.
Former health secretary Alan Johnson launched a Privacy and Dignity Challenge to virtually eliminate mixed sex accommodation and ensure that male and female patients did not share bathrooms, toilets or sleeping areas or have to pass through opposite sex areas in order to protect patients from unwanted exposure.
The minister did acknowledge that there would be some exceptions where mixed sex wards were unavoidable for clinical reasons such as in specialist units like intensive care and urgent admissions for problems including heart attacks.
Bosses of City Hospital, in Winson Green, are getting a scheme under way but revealed they face huge problems in converting ageing impractical wards in the Victorian building and may have to reorganise the layout, creating three extra wards to cope with the situation in a £860,000 project.
Peter Blythin, Director of Nursing and Workforce, NHS West Midlands said: “We are pleased that so many of our organisations are benefitting from this fund. The improvements currently under way, through the use of the Challenge Fund will help the NHS across the West Midlands to remove any remaining shared sex treatment areas except where, due to clinical reasons, this is unavoidable.”
A further £310,000 is being spent at Worcestershire’s Community Hospitals to improve bedroom and bathroom facilities plus add partitions and signs.
While additional bathrooms on wards are being added at Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and new single sex quiet rooms introduced at St Georges Hospital in Staffordshire, the George Bryan Centre, in Tamworth, the Margaret Stanhope centre in Burton and Shelton hospital.
Upgrades are being made to Malins Ward at South Warwickshire General Hospitals NHS Trust to create closed bays and better toilet and bathroom facilities.
There will also be improvements to A&E, creating single sex observation beds and some of the funds will contribute to a new two storey ward block, due to open at the end of the year.
George Eliot Hospitals NHS Trust, in Nuneaton, will be increasing numbers of single sex waiting rooms on the day unit and Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust plans to add bathrooms, screens and partitions.
Work is also under way to add compartments to corridors on the day surgery ward at Bridgnorth Hospital, in Shropshire.
And £344,000 is being spent to improve ward privacy at Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust including additional shower rooms, toilets and screens.
Most projects look set to be completed by the end of this month to remove nearly all remaining mixed sex accommodation.
