Labour manifesto, 1997: “work towards the elimination of mixed-sex wards”
Labour health minister Lord Darzi (a practising surgeon), yesterday: “The only way we’re going to have single-sex wards within the NHS is to build the whole of the NHS into single rooms. That is an aspiration that cannot be met.”
Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for Health, isn’t too impressed: “This is an astonishing admission of failure on an issue of crucial importance to patients. The Government has flip-flopped on this manifesto commitment for over 10 years. We now have a clinician blowing the gaff on a political commitment which appears to have no substance.”
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9 Comments
Unfortunately I don’t think the public will be up in arms about this, as it’s not a major issue relative to crime, immigration, the EU, terrorism etc.
Besides, I lost of the number of broken Labour promises years ago.
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My understanding of this is that single-sex wards used to exist (albeit decades ago) and were scrapped as a matter of policy. Surely the issue is one of privacy rather than sex, is it not?
Firstly Mark, its Lord Darzi. He is the author of the ‘Healthcare for London: Consulting the Capital’, currently being consulted upon, which is looking at major reconfiguration of services across London, including the introduction of polyclinics.
Julian H- single sex wards is a matter of not only privacy, but dignity. I was working in the NHS when Labour came to power in 1997, and this was one of the centre pieces of their pledge to ‘save the NHS’ I have seen for myself, older women in the same wards as older confused men, often in a state of undress. The situation can be worst in mental health units, and I’ve personally dealt with complaints of assaults against against women. The situation is a complete disgrace- 10 years into a Labour government.
Thanks Meral; corrected.
Thanks for your response, Meral. Whilst I don’t have the experience within hospitals that you appear to, I still think the problems you raise are specific problems and not directly caused by mixed-sex wards (or tackled by introducing single-sex wards). Undignified happenings (to use a kind of euphemism) can presumably be tackled by improving privacy and service. A person in a ward would not want to be seen in an ‘undignified happening’ by other people, irrespective of their sex, and the said people would not want to witness the ‘undignified happening’ irrespective of the said person’s sex. Similarly assault of any kind within hospitals is unacceptable and I’d have thought there were effective ways of preventing it per se.
I am aware that this has not been Nu Lab’s stance though, and thus they have reneged on their ’97 pledge.
Apart from some sorts of religious fundamentalists, I do not think that anyone in their right mind would advocate single sex intensive care units. The same argument of the priority of the objective of curing the patient applies to many acute care wards. In caring for patients with chronic conditions, dignity and accepted custom are important: single sex wards are fairly obviously better. Where to make wards single sex or mixed at the margin is surely best left to the individual hospitals.
New Labour, even in 1997, was blundering about with uniform policies for the NHS imposed from the centre. And the general policy of mixed sex wards – almost equally clumsy – had existed for years before under thec Tories.
And why are politicians so deeply embroiled in this?
The whole problem stems from the illiberal centralised structure of the NHS.
This should be up to individual hospitals in a competative structure. If people want single sex wards then they should be able to choose them themselves and not have to rely on the whim of MPs and peers.
Diversity: I don’t think we are even talking about intensive care units. We mean when patients go into hospital for planned treatment, they should expect the privacy and dignity afforded by single sex wards.
I don’t know about you, but if I, or one of my daughters went into hospital, the last thing I would want is to be in the same ward as a bloke, who has to pee in a bottle, and in his confusion, doesn’t draw his curtain round his bed properly! Or, as I’ve seen happen, an older man trying to get into an older woman’s bed, confusing it with his own.
But then perhaps I’m a bit fussy…
Meral
With all respect, the last thing you or your daughters (or your sons – men are more comfortable in single sex hospital accomodation as well as women) would want is nothing to do with the bloke in the other bed. The last thing you want is not to be receiving treatment. With a single waiting list rather than one for each sex more people get treated.
That said, the sort of unpleasant experiences that you fear are generally the product of centrally imposing a norm rather than letting hospitals sort the matter out sensibly in their individual circumstances. In modern hospital accomodation two-sex 2 or 4 bed sections can be kept to a minimum with the difficult (e.g. confused) cases kept in the single sex sections. In old, open wards I have seen the same effect realised by keeping women and men mostly at the opposite ends of the ward with only a limited mixed zone in the middle.