"Bed management and mixed sex bays"

Although my experience was with Monklands General Hospital, Airdrie, I believe that it must also be happening in other Scottish hospitals.

I am not complaining as such about Monklands Hospital. The care and treatment that I received there was beyond my expectations and all staff were friendly, courteous, supportive and helpful.

I acknowledge that when I was a patient the hospital was bursting at the seams and were under pressure to use every bed space that they had, but mixed sex rooms were a step too far. Let me tell you what it is like as a female patient.

One excellent policy that Monklands has is that ambulance patients are taken straight into A&E and triaged. It prevents this policy of ambulances queuing up outside with patients waiting to be triaged and also lets the patient relax on a bed. In total I spent 15 hours in A&E, 12 hours in A&E Receiving Unit, 56 hours in Acute Medical Receiving Unit, 14 hours in two different rooms on ward 18 and 7.30 hours at Hairmyers Cath Lab.

It was in the A&E Receiving Unit that I first discovered the policy of mixed sex rooms. I didn’t know that this was a policy, so it was a bit of a shock. In the room with me were two men who spent three hours chatting inappropriately. I had no option than to lie in bed, ill, listening to this. Just to make things a bit more difficult, the fourth bed was taken late at night by a very distressed woman who had a complete lack of understanding and shouted and bawled all night.

While I was on this ward, I encountered an amazing nurse, whom I must praise. They were in charge of my room and other rooms around me. I have never seen anyone work as hard, they never stopped the whole shift. They were like a blur. They even found time to chat to the distressed woman for 15 minutes trying, in vain, to calm her down. I don’t know how they could stand the chaos of that ward.

When I was moved into the AMRU, I was joined within hours by one of these men. I felt sorry for the elderly woman in the bed next to me and therefore opposite this man, who had had a heart attack and was confined to bed. She was really not well but she had nothing to do but to look at him..

When I was put into Ward 18, I was put into a room with three men. Disconcerting right away but exasperated by the man in the bed next to me, who was delirious and kept throwing off his blankets and gown and therefore was stark naked. The curtain was drawn between us, but I had to pass him to go to the toilet. Glancing at him on the way back to my bed I thought, No this is just going too far.

Now I have anxiety but usually it's well under control. Now my anxiety kicked in and I felt very scared and unsafe. I am aware that there have been many attacks on women patients by male patients and this thought was running through my head. I spoke to the nurses, and they told senior management that I wasn’t happy. They explained that this was unusual to have 3:1 set up, but the problem was that I was on oxygen and therefore needed to be monitored and this was the only monitoring bed they had available.

They were very good at coming into the room every few minutes to see how I was and to wrap the man up again. They also said I should use the toilet in the room next door, as it was all women. I was dreading the night as I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep. However, about 9pm I was taken off the oxygen and moved into the room next door. However, in order to move me, several patients had to be moved strategically from different rooms.

So, as you can see this policy of mixed sex rooms disturbed me more than I thought it would. I am lucky in that I do not have a history of abuse by men, but what about all the women who do and find themselves in this situation?

I hope that policy makers and managers can use my experience to improve on these issues.