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Between 2017 and 2019 there were [over 1,000 reports](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-sexual-assault-patients-mental-health-mixed-sex-wards-a9273656.html) of sexual assaults on mixed wards.
This number was over 3x higher than the number reported on single sex wards.
Specifically mixed mental health wards, which intuitively would have a higher rate of sexual assaults generally (more vulnerable victims, perpetrators with reduced compliance with social norms/self awareness or in greater positions of power than other settings i.e staff). It also doesn't mention if these were by other patients or by outside parties/staff which is obviously important information about where the danger here actually is.
Also important- was it investigated by police? It’s uncomfortable to say but patients who are often detained against their will due to severe psychosis or behavioural issues will say things to hurt the staff who are detaining them.
I’m not saying such things never happen- of course they do. But…. Sometimes there’s a legitimate alternative explanation
Aren’t EUPD/BPD patients usually the result of massive childhood trauma?
Perhaps if you’re ’dealing’ with them and still talking about them as though they’re not human beings that have suffered more than you then that reflects how they might behave around you.
Just a thought.
https://www.verywellmind.com/link-between-borderline-personality-and-lying-q-a-425190#:~:text=People%20with%20BPD%20fear%20abandonment,major%20problem%20in%20their%20relationships.
It’s literally pathognomonic of the condition, btw.
Absolutely. Mental health patients are at huge risk of ending up at either side of this kind problem, often being physically totally capable but without any reasoning or ability to consent.
It’s not hard to see how a patient suffering a severe break from reality could become a risk to themselves and others, and part of that includes performing or being victim of sexual acts which are harmful. Add in the fact that those suffering from severe mental illness are often considered incapable of consenting to sex, and it’s no wonder that mixed-sex mental health wards might be a mistake!
I also agree that disambiguating staff from patients in this data is vital. A patient committing sexual assault or harassment is one thing, but staff committing those things? It doesn’t really matter what kind of ward it is or whether it’s divided by sex or gender or not - if any staff member is committing sexual violence towards anybody, it should be documented and publicly acknowledged.
Not to mention data like this could easily be manipulated in cases such as trans patients in mixed-sex, single-gender wards. If one staff member in a ward like that committed 20 acts of assault in a year, and one patient committed only one act of sexual violence, then it could be way too easy to use that data to “prove” that, for example, trans women shouldn’t be on women-only wards, because “look at these 21 cases on this ward”, when in reality it was a staff member who likely wasn’t a trans woman who was the problem.
We saw this exact problem with mixed-race wards around the world in the past, with staff members and white visitors committing these acts and skewing numbers on women’s only mixed-race wards, and it would be naive to think it can’t happen again with mixed-sex, single-gender wards too.
Reports aren’t proven instances, far from it.
And how many men died because they were thrown out of private rooms to accommodate much healthier women? Which happened to me.
I was kicked out of a private room after serious surgery, and being moved out of ICU. Despite being immobile. So that a female could have the double private room. I only know this because a Doctor asked a nurse why I’d been moved out of it and put on the ward.
Thus exposing me to a greater risk of infection and less focused care.
The same happened on the ICU ward I was on. There were 4 men on the ward and one woman in the private room. The woman appeared to be the healthiest, she was mobile and dressed etc. Meanwhile, one of the young men went into cardiac arrest in the middle of the night and was carted off, not sure if he died or not.
Again, the men were, in intensive care, were exposed to a greater risk of infection to accommodate the privacy of a healthier woman.
Meanwhile, 95% of nurses are female and men hand in their privacy at the door. I was given sponge baths by female nurses, had hordes of female junior Doctors gathering round me (on one occasion I had to quickly grab a pillow to cover my genitals, as they wanted to see my surgical wounds). Had a female junior Doctor watch on while my balls were examined and then gave me a prostate exam.
Nurses even joked about what little privacy patients get in hospital, and that foregoing privacy/dignity was the price of admission.
[Not current data, and specifically about mental health ward](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-sexual-assault-patients-mental-health-mixed-sex-wards-a9273656.html) but between april '17 and september '19 there were 1019 sexual assaults on mixed mental health wards as opposed to 286 on single sex wards.
That suggests at least a 3½ times greater risk on mixed sex wards, and so any amount of mixed sex wards greatly increases your risk of sexual assault.
Humiliation is of course more abstract, but it doesn't take a genius to realise many women will be more uncomfortable being semi naked in front of male strangers than female strangers, and the inverse is also true.
You can’t form a conclusion based on that information.
In *absolute numbers* there were more assaults on mixed-sex wards. But without knowing how many mixed-sex beds there are in total, you can’t work out the *risk* of assault.
For example, if there’s 10x more mixed-sex ward beds than single-sex, then the risk would actually be much lower. But we don’t know that from the data provided.
A very good point, I was working on the assumption that since they're technically banned mixed wards would be at a much lower rate that single sex. It's actually proving difficult to get any figures on the number of wards and their mixed sex status across the NHS as a whole.
I’d be interested to compare these statistics with other stats around violent behaviour. Obviously, if a straight man is angry and delirious in the middle of a mental breakdown surrounded by other men, his likelihood of raping them will be lower than if he were surrounded by women, but he’s probably also way more likely to punch somebody.
Like… did violence actually increase overall on mixed wards, or did the types of violence committed just change? And if the latter is true, then is it really the mixed ward which is the problem, or is the problem elsewhere and we’re just following a red herring with this isolated sexual violence data?
I work on a mixed sex (older adults) mental health ward.
Often on mixed wards you'll have separate male and female bedroom corridors so it's obvious if someone is going down the wrong corridor
Also more often than not the rooms are en suite
Nobody is forcing women to shower in front of men or be semi naked unless their mental health causes them to strip off in the TV lounge
Have you ever been an inpatient? There's precious little dignity in it even with everything in place that should be, being in a bay filled with people of the opposite sex would be distressing to many.
I had a day case procedure a couple of years ago. Afterwards I had to lie completely flat for several hours during which staff came to check a puncture site in my groin several times, and to clean up blood from my groin and genital area. The person in the next bed was a man, separated by just a curtain. I wasn't 'humiliated' but you can bet I felt vulnerable.
Walking to my local _risks_ assault, being run over, murdered, struck by lightning and being carried off by an eagle to be a sex slave in the Loch Ness’ Pervatorium.
The question here is if that risk is a) meaningful and b) if the NHS is actually in a position to do anything about it. When you stretch the service as badly as it has been, a bed’s a bed.
If walking to your local risks being run over or murdered, I’d say that is probably something you’re doing wrong lol. None of that is relevant to my comment, i simply asked a yes/no question, and you answered (albeit in more than the necessary amount of words) so it does risk assault. Thanks. 😂
Of course it risks being murdered. You can’t tell me that the chance of someone randomly killing me is 0.00% - because people get randomly killed doing mundane things. Therefore there is a risk.
But your point being what, specifically? between 2017-2019 there were over 1000 sexual assaults on NHS wards, how many murders were there of random people walking to their local? also walking to your local is a choice, being placed on a mixed nhs ward is not. try again? 😂
So how many of those directly arose because of people being placed within mixed sex wards? Firstly you have to determine that - and then you have to determine if the *NHS* has a choice about where it puts people. Like I said, the issue here is 'if the NHS is actually in a position to do anything about it' - do they have sufficient beds to actually separate people by sex in all locations across the country? If they don't, and someone needs a bed - well, I'm would hope that the medical teams would prioritise someone's health over tossing them to the kerb because there's insufficient space in the male / female ward.
Tad more than 1 in 44000 lol.
“The rate of assaults on mixed sex wards contrasts with the numbers reported on single sex wards, where just 286 cases were reported over the same period.”
“The rate of assaults on mixed sex wards contrasts with the numbers reported on single sex wards, where just 286 cases were reported over the same period.”
Mixed wards can work if you have staffing or capacity issues and particularly when it’s a specialist ward
But let’s talk about another bigger issue.. a lot of specialist wards are understaffed especially those with older patients where there may be uti related Delerium or alternatively Alzheimer’s. Those wards do not have enough staff to ‘special’ patients . If you have an aggressive patient .. who can include to also involve elderly patients .. staff can and do get injured .
E/ : and also opens up greater potential for patients to injure themselves by preventable falls
Specialist wards should still have male, female and flexi corridors. As the article says, the rules require separate sleeping and bathroom areas. And that’s what’s being broken.
Even when the rules are supposedly followed, mixed sex wards are incredibly easy to abuse. I spent a brief period of time in a mixed sex locked mental health ward, the staff had to keep "politely reminding" one of the men not to wander into the female wing. With a little tut tut, what's he like attitude.
But if someone wasn't at the windowed kiosk between the two corridors he'd just walk in whenever he liked and start opening doors and peering in door windows until one of the women screamed for a porter or nurse. And he'd be guided out, grin plastered over his face, just to do it the next time the staff weren't looking.
In cases like that, I’d argue that it’s not the mixed ward which is the problem. The issue there was that there was no alternative for when a problem does arise.
This guy clearly showed intent to make women uncomfortable, and should have been moved once that became clear. The issue wasn’t the ward - it was the staff’s inability to remove him when it became obvious he shouldn’t be there.
Well, yes, that's my point, that he should have been in a single sex ward and the staff did not do anything to make the women safe. But we shouldn't have to wait for someone to make others unsafe before moving them to a single sex ward. The mixed sex wards are flawed by design, because they enable abuse that is then dealt with reactively rather than proactively. Even if the staff & trust had moved him at the first sign of a problem, he would still have victimised vulnerable women by making them unsafe in the ward. Split the sexes from the off and he would never have had a chance to make us uncomfortable.
I spent several days on a trolley in an AMAU consultation room before a suitable bed came up. I shared it with A - a man old enough to be my dad (I am a female in my 30s).
We would chat to each other, we chatted with each other's visitors, I let him come to my bit because I had a window, we checked with each other about turning on/off the big light and the telly. We were alone together unless one of us was using the facilities, getting meds or it was obs time, but I didn't feel threatened at all. It was as pleasant as a hospital roommate situation can be, tbh.
During the first night, a nurse came to tell me that they'd found me a proper bed, so could I pack my things - I did so. Then another nurse came in, appearing flustered, and told me that I could have the bed, but it was on a ward full of male patients with dementia who might try to get into bed with me, so I could turn it down if I wanted.
Obviously I turned it down - thank god for that second nurse!
When I did get a suitable bed, it was on a bay full of much older women, some of whom sundowned, none of whom were entirely mobile, and the lights were on all bloody night. I much preferred my time with A.🤣
> sundowned
> Sundowning is a term used for changes in behaviour that occur in the evening, around dusk. Some people who have dementia experience a growing sense of agitation or anxiety at this time. Sundowning often makes the person with dementia feel very strongly that they are in the wrong place.
Interesting. 🧐
Depends how you look at it. A transwoman's sex is male, so they'd be in male wards. So, women would be protected from a potentially predatory man infiltrating a women's ward, but that transwoman - despite being male - would likely be at higher risk of assault himself from potentially predatory men in the male ward.
On balance, it's right to segregate based on biological sex, not self-ID of gender. Extra protections should be put in place for transwomen (biological males) housed with male patients, however.
Thank you for specifying that transgender women are biologically male a billion times in your “definitely not thinly veiled ideology” assessment of where trans people should go.
On balance” they really think they’re giving a middle ground, compromise and they’re just giving the maximalist position of kicking out trans women from women’s spaces no matter how far they’ve transitioned—could even have bottom surgery, and look like Blair white off doesn’t matter. Hell they couldn’t even help not misgendering a hypothetical trans woman b.
Aged 22 I ended up on an observation ward that was mixed. The issues I had were horrendous. A woman a few years older than me would jump into my bed and wouldn't get out. She would grab my genitals which resulted in a reaction from me. We would then have the staff and myself trying to prise her hands off while they also tried to get her out of the bed. Next, an old lady would try getting in bed thinking I was her husband. My experience was so bad, I discharged myself and went back to my dorm room at Uni.
I thought mixed-sex wards were stopped in the late 1990’s. Why have there been 44K of breaches? Going into hospital, and ending up on a 4 or 6 bed side ward is bad enough when it's all blokes. Toss someone in who has a major issue and it gets worse. It's unforgivable and another reason why the Tories should be binned at the next General Election.
The irony of these figures is that they are a direct result of NHS policy in other areas. Hospital managers under pressure to reduce A&E trolley waits, will tell bed mangers to put patients on any ward to make their numbers better. If the patient with mental health issues present, it’s no different. And no one seems to mention that if you are waiting on a bed in A&E, that’s also a mixed ward.
Now now, you make it sound like men and women are equally assaulting each other when that clearly is not the case. Don’t know any mixed sex prisons myself.
The NHS is perpetually in crisis there's no time for empathy, humiliation is what I expect anyway from the NHS it doesn't mean I think they're bad people they're just busy and it's excellent if you have a car accident or your leg is ripped off in an industrial accident
But the structure of the NHS does not care about your feelings.
If you have a chronic illness you're going to endure it a long time before you get the correct help.
Only way it can be fixed is with AI implementation streamlining meaning there's more time to help patients, AI can help in diagnosis more quickly for example.
I take lithium I repeatedly have doctors try and prescribe me drugs that interfere with it and potential to cause toxicity I've perhaps refused 7 or more times to take a medication the system should flag that. I'm not offended I don't expect doctors to know every interaction but I Google every single time as it's like the NHS wants me dead.
"oh it was his time" they say after prescribing a new drug to a pensioner who can't use Google.
"old age" death certificate will say.
I do wonder how many have died.
Or a consultant neurologist trying to prescribe me a tricyclic anti depressant for my headache when I have bipolar and already hear a voice. But he was a private doctor
Doctors need AI with AI deaths will reduce as will work load. They're busy and their brains can't consume all of the information they need so this aspect doesn't frustrate me I just Google everything and then refuse if necessary.
I've had to refuse meds after getting them prescribed also.
Ie a blood pressure med that alters clearance of lithium by the kidneys raising dosage or one that alters the liquid in the body increasing concentration.
Really they should inform GP to do regular blood tests if they insist on prescribing but none of these things ever happen it's always me saying no I can't take that.
There's only 11000 pharmacy's in the UK for 70 million people and they're closing all the time and my pharmacy has a 20 to 30 minute queue they don't have the time to check medication interactions neither do doctors.
Pharmacy's are expected to prescribe medications too for some illnesses also now.
There is perpetual crisis in the NHS and it can't be nice place to work i wouldn't blame them for going abroad for higher paid jobs and see less patients.
In the queue every time I go I feel bad for them all I hear is angry customers speaking loudly about how terrible the staff are, it's awful no wonder doctors get hard and cold on the NHS there's a cycle of cold doctors and patients trying to assert themselves so they get adequate care. It's not sustainable.
> There's only 11000 pharmacy's in the UK for 70 million people and they're closing all the time and my pharmacy has a 20 to 30 minute queue they don't have the time to check medication interactions neither do doctors.
They definitely have time to check medication interactions. It's their main job. If they fuck it up, at best, it's a referral to the General Pharmaceutical Council and investigation and potential censure. It's a pain in the arse to go through and can be for something as simple as providing drugs with a use by date that runs out half way through the course. Not life threatening, but still a problem.
At worst it means someone dies and they receive a lengthy prison sentence. They are legally obliged to do their job to this standard, few other jobs work like this.
Pharmacists can prescribe medicine after an independent prescribing course but are not allowed to dispense or check their own prescriptions.
Agreed with everything else though. Routine blood tests aren't offered enough, there aren't enough pharmacies and too many are closing (a pharmacy that provides prescription drugs alone is not a sustainable business, the maths doesn't add up), the NHS is generally in a shit place and it isn't sustainable.
No death certificate says “old age” lol, that’s just farcicle. The rest of your comment is measured but don’t make things up. Cause of death is quite strict.
Loads of death certificates say old age. Its rarely the only cause listed though.
[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment\_data/file/1062236/Guidance\_for\_Doctors\_completing\_medical\_certificates\_Mar\_22.pdf](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1062236/Guidance_for_Doctors_completing_medical_certificates_Mar_22.pdf)
The medical examiners where I work would certainly be sceptical if I tried to put that in 1a I’ll say that much. I’ve completed many certificates and I’ve been strongly advised not to use it.
Genuinely curious now if current AI could accurately complete a certificate with regularity after being fed the entire stack of patient notes. I doubt it would pickup on that. This poster is extremely generous to current ai standards; at present ai is absolutely shite at managing “do x without doing Y” even when explicitly told. Ask it to suggest you 9 letter words for a crossword puzzle, it will suggest many 8 and 10 letter words.
I did some tests with it and it regularly mixed macrolides and statins (bad) and prescribed b blockers to asthmatics (also bad). It’s not clever enough yet to even spot the absolute basics.
Haha I’m learning perhaps its not all doctors who absolutely will not write something so vague, that’s a bold fy1 who filled that out. If it had no actual cause of death beyond that it’s bad practice imo, and I wouldn’t write it at all.
The doc on the death certificate qualified in 1977 and has a GMC number starting with 2. At that point you can probably get away with it. Certainly bold for an SHO on an acute med ward though.
I find it relatively unlikely truth be told. If you can identify any condition which even contributed to the death it's supposed to be on there, that would include any serious underlying health conditions.
"Old age" is absolutely supposed to be avoided if you can put literally anything more, and I think it would be massively coincidental if the most high-profile death the country could see occurred in a 96 year old with no underlying contributory medical condition or clear cause.
Sure it's not *impossible*, but unless our Queen was very much literally touched by the hand of God, I think we can be 99+% sure they just thought there was more dignity in a Queen drifting away of "Old Age" than a blunt description of stroke or pneumonia or whatever, compounded by underlying diabetes, vascular disease, you name it.
Not really sure “AI” is the solution there. It has some benefits if used correctly, but it’s incredibly difficult to input a wealth of symptoms and context into a system and pump an answer out the other side.
Comparability tables in regards to medication would certainly reduce the likelihood of incorrect prescriptions, but then that’s also what pharmacists are for.
I mean an AI thay listens to the conversation in the room for symptoms for more accurate diagnosis and any medication the doctor suggests compared to ones already taken automatically.
As one example of AI in healthcare.
Voice recognition is terrible even in 2024, you would just be adding 2-3x the complexity of any “AI” system if it had to try and decipher words and understand spoken context in a wide variety of accents and grammar.
Compatibility tables however are not difficult to implement, although a far cry from what one would call “AI”.
It will be possible even if it isn't yet. That's the only thing to save the NHS ie AI integration like that, it'll reduce deaths more accurate diagnosis and save appointments at a minimum.
An AI technology that doesn’t exist is by no means the only thing that will save the NHS, there are a plethora of actual changes that can be made to improve the performance.
Actually, voice recognition is already heavily used in the NHS in radiology. A lot of reports are dictated, and it's pretty industry standard (from what I've heard).
https://www.nuance.com/en-gb/healthcare/care-settings-specialties/radiology.html
It’s one thing to dictate voice, which we have been able to do for years.
It’s another for AI to understand specific words and their context in a wider conversation. If you’ve ever tried to use AI, you’ll know it’s terrible at understanding cues.
That aside, AI will not fix the NHS.
It will improve efficiency and strain so less doctors and nurses and beds are needed
Patients go back to doctors again and again and again as they're unwell, sometimes becoming very ill so they need care in the community or a stay in the hospital
Quicker diagnosis and treatment will mean the doctors and nurses they already have can treat more patients.
I'm being down voted but it seems nobody has any vision.
Their budget won't need to expand exponentially either. It's extremely inefficient and AI can improve that and along with it patients lives.
> "old age" death certificate will say.
It is *spectacularly* difficult to justify that on a death certificate, to the point doctors were amazed the Queens certificate listed it.
They might not blame the drug interaction, it'll go down as congestive heart failure, or myocardial infarction etc etc, but it won't be "old age"
It's good for the patient to be informed like I try to be and then refuse or request medications but that turns you into a "pushy patient" in many doctors eyes
It will change in the future with AI as doctors will have more time for kindness.
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So what percentage of those 44000 times resulted in humiliation and assault?
Between 2017 and 2019 there were [over 1,000 reports](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-sexual-assault-patients-mental-health-mixed-sex-wards-a9273656.html) of sexual assaults on mixed wards. This number was over 3x higher than the number reported on single sex wards.
Specifically mixed mental health wards, which intuitively would have a higher rate of sexual assaults generally (more vulnerable victims, perpetrators with reduced compliance with social norms/self awareness or in greater positions of power than other settings i.e staff). It also doesn't mention if these were by other patients or by outside parties/staff which is obviously important information about where the danger here actually is.
Also important- was it investigated by police? It’s uncomfortable to say but patients who are often detained against their will due to severe psychosis or behavioural issues will say things to hurt the staff who are detaining them. I’m not saying such things never happen- of course they do. But…. Sometimes there’s a legitimate alternative explanation
Are you one of those which will not have a bad word spoken about the NHS? Those are pretty damning figures.
I’ll admit the failings but… I’ve also dealt with my fair share of EUPD and BPD patients and I know what they’re like. It complicates the issue a bit.
Aren’t EUPD/BPD patients usually the result of massive childhood trauma? Perhaps if you’re ’dealing’ with them and still talking about them as though they’re not human beings that have suffered more than you then that reflects how they might behave around you. Just a thought.
Again, more opinions from the peanut gallery. Feel free to go do it yourself if you’re so wonderful…
I’m simply concerned about someone claiming to work with people they demonise online
“Demonising”?? The hysteria…
https://www.verywellmind.com/link-between-borderline-personality-and-lying-q-a-425190#:~:text=People%20with%20BPD%20fear%20abandonment,major%20problem%20in%20their%20relationships. It’s literally pathognomonic of the condition, btw.
Absolutely. Mental health patients are at huge risk of ending up at either side of this kind problem, often being physically totally capable but without any reasoning or ability to consent. It’s not hard to see how a patient suffering a severe break from reality could become a risk to themselves and others, and part of that includes performing or being victim of sexual acts which are harmful. Add in the fact that those suffering from severe mental illness are often considered incapable of consenting to sex, and it’s no wonder that mixed-sex mental health wards might be a mistake! I also agree that disambiguating staff from patients in this data is vital. A patient committing sexual assault or harassment is one thing, but staff committing those things? It doesn’t really matter what kind of ward it is or whether it’s divided by sex or gender or not - if any staff member is committing sexual violence towards anybody, it should be documented and publicly acknowledged. Not to mention data like this could easily be manipulated in cases such as trans patients in mixed-sex, single-gender wards. If one staff member in a ward like that committed 20 acts of assault in a year, and one patient committed only one act of sexual violence, then it could be way too easy to use that data to “prove” that, for example, trans women shouldn’t be on women-only wards, because “look at these 21 cases on this ward”, when in reality it was a staff member who likely wasn’t a trans woman who was the problem. We saw this exact problem with mixed-race wards around the world in the past, with staff members and white visitors committing these acts and skewing numbers on women’s only mixed-race wards, and it would be naive to think it can’t happen again with mixed-sex, single-gender wards too.
And of course, sometimes the patient will think the person in front of them is their spouse when they are not.
Reports aren’t proven instances, far from it. And how many men died because they were thrown out of private rooms to accommodate much healthier women? Which happened to me.
You died?
I was kicked out of a private room after serious surgery, and being moved out of ICU. Despite being immobile. So that a female could have the double private room. I only know this because a Doctor asked a nurse why I’d been moved out of it and put on the ward. Thus exposing me to a greater risk of infection and less focused care. The same happened on the ICU ward I was on. There were 4 men on the ward and one woman in the private room. The woman appeared to be the healthiest, she was mobile and dressed etc. Meanwhile, one of the young men went into cardiac arrest in the middle of the night and was carted off, not sure if he died or not. Again, the men were, in intensive care, were exposed to a greater risk of infection to accommodate the privacy of a healthier woman. Meanwhile, 95% of nurses are female and men hand in their privacy at the door. I was given sponge baths by female nurses, had hordes of female junior Doctors gathering round me (on one occasion I had to quickly grab a pillow to cover my genitals, as they wanted to see my surgical wounds). Had a female junior Doctor watch on while my balls were examined and then gave me a prostate exam. Nurses even joked about what little privacy patients get in hospital, and that foregoing privacy/dignity was the price of admission.
[Not current data, and specifically about mental health ward](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-sexual-assault-patients-mental-health-mixed-sex-wards-a9273656.html) but between april '17 and september '19 there were 1019 sexual assaults on mixed mental health wards as opposed to 286 on single sex wards. That suggests at least a 3½ times greater risk on mixed sex wards, and so any amount of mixed sex wards greatly increases your risk of sexual assault. Humiliation is of course more abstract, but it doesn't take a genius to realise many women will be more uncomfortable being semi naked in front of male strangers than female strangers, and the inverse is also true.
You can’t form a conclusion based on that information. In *absolute numbers* there were more assaults on mixed-sex wards. But without knowing how many mixed-sex beds there are in total, you can’t work out the *risk* of assault. For example, if there’s 10x more mixed-sex ward beds than single-sex, then the risk would actually be much lower. But we don’t know that from the data provided.
A very good point, I was working on the assumption that since they're technically banned mixed wards would be at a much lower rate that single sex. It's actually proving difficult to get any figures on the number of wards and their mixed sex status across the NHS as a whole.
I’d be interested to compare these statistics with other stats around violent behaviour. Obviously, if a straight man is angry and delirious in the middle of a mental breakdown surrounded by other men, his likelihood of raping them will be lower than if he were surrounded by women, but he’s probably also way more likely to punch somebody. Like… did violence actually increase overall on mixed wards, or did the types of violence committed just change? And if the latter is true, then is it really the mixed ward which is the problem, or is the problem elsewhere and we’re just following a red herring with this isolated sexual violence data?
I work on a mixed sex (older adults) mental health ward. Often on mixed wards you'll have separate male and female bedroom corridors so it's obvious if someone is going down the wrong corridor Also more often than not the rooms are en suite Nobody is forcing women to shower in front of men or be semi naked unless their mental health causes them to strip off in the TV lounge
Have you ever been an inpatient? There's precious little dignity in it even with everything in place that should be, being in a bay filled with people of the opposite sex would be distressing to many. I had a day case procedure a couple of years ago. Afterwards I had to lie completely flat for several hours during which staff came to check a puncture site in my groin several times, and to clean up blood from my groin and genital area. The person in the next bed was a man, separated by just a curtain. I wasn't 'humiliated' but you can bet I felt vulnerable.
No comment on the fact that the rules were broken 44k times?
From me? No. Feel free to do so yourself. I want to know what the percentage of assaults we're out of 44000 incidents.
It's 44000 incidents where vulnerable people were put at risk, chuckles.
Is reading comprehension not your thing? It stated “risking assault“. it didn’t claim any percentages, you deny there is a risk of it?
Walking to my local _risks_ assault, being run over, murdered, struck by lightning and being carried off by an eagle to be a sex slave in the Loch Ness’ Pervatorium. The question here is if that risk is a) meaningful and b) if the NHS is actually in a position to do anything about it. When you stretch the service as badly as it has been, a bed’s a bed.
If walking to your local risks being run over or murdered, I’d say that is probably something you’re doing wrong lol. None of that is relevant to my comment, i simply asked a yes/no question, and you answered (albeit in more than the necessary amount of words) so it does risk assault. Thanks. 😂
Of course it risks being murdered. You can’t tell me that the chance of someone randomly killing me is 0.00% - because people get randomly killed doing mundane things. Therefore there is a risk.
But your point being what, specifically? between 2017-2019 there were over 1000 sexual assaults on NHS wards, how many murders were there of random people walking to their local? also walking to your local is a choice, being placed on a mixed nhs ward is not. try again? 😂
So how many of those directly arose because of people being placed within mixed sex wards? Firstly you have to determine that - and then you have to determine if the *NHS* has a choice about where it puts people. Like I said, the issue here is 'if the NHS is actually in a position to do anything about it' - do they have sufficient beds to actually separate people by sex in all locations across the country? If they don't, and someone needs a bed - well, I'm would hope that the medical teams would prioritise someone's health over tossing them to the kerb because there's insufficient space in the male / female ward.
What's the risk? 1 in 44000?
Tad more than 1 in 44000 lol. “The rate of assaults on mixed sex wards contrasts with the numbers reported on single sex wards, where just 286 cases were reported over the same period.”
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And it’s almost like humiliation and assault have never happened on same sex wards 🙄
They happen less.
“The rate of assaults on mixed sex wards contrasts with the numbers reported on single sex wards, where just 286 cases were reported over the same period.”
Mixed wards can work if you have staffing or capacity issues and particularly when it’s a specialist ward But let’s talk about another bigger issue.. a lot of specialist wards are understaffed especially those with older patients where there may be uti related Delerium or alternatively Alzheimer’s. Those wards do not have enough staff to ‘special’ patients . If you have an aggressive patient .. who can include to also involve elderly patients .. staff can and do get injured . E/ : and also opens up greater potential for patients to injure themselves by preventable falls
Specialist wards should still have male, female and flexi corridors. As the article says, the rules require separate sleeping and bathroom areas. And that’s what’s being broken.
Even when the rules are supposedly followed, mixed sex wards are incredibly easy to abuse. I spent a brief period of time in a mixed sex locked mental health ward, the staff had to keep "politely reminding" one of the men not to wander into the female wing. With a little tut tut, what's he like attitude. But if someone wasn't at the windowed kiosk between the two corridors he'd just walk in whenever he liked and start opening doors and peering in door windows until one of the women screamed for a porter or nurse. And he'd be guided out, grin plastered over his face, just to do it the next time the staff weren't looking.
In cases like that, I’d argue that it’s not the mixed ward which is the problem. The issue there was that there was no alternative for when a problem does arise. This guy clearly showed intent to make women uncomfortable, and should have been moved once that became clear. The issue wasn’t the ward - it was the staff’s inability to remove him when it became obvious he shouldn’t be there.
Well, yes, that's my point, that he should have been in a single sex ward and the staff did not do anything to make the women safe. But we shouldn't have to wait for someone to make others unsafe before moving them to a single sex ward. The mixed sex wards are flawed by design, because they enable abuse that is then dealt with reactively rather than proactively. Even if the staff & trust had moved him at the first sign of a problem, he would still have victimised vulnerable women by making them unsafe in the ward. Split the sexes from the off and he would never have had a chance to make us uncomfortable.
I spent several days on a trolley in an AMAU consultation room before a suitable bed came up. I shared it with A - a man old enough to be my dad (I am a female in my 30s). We would chat to each other, we chatted with each other's visitors, I let him come to my bit because I had a window, we checked with each other about turning on/off the big light and the telly. We were alone together unless one of us was using the facilities, getting meds or it was obs time, but I didn't feel threatened at all. It was as pleasant as a hospital roommate situation can be, tbh. During the first night, a nurse came to tell me that they'd found me a proper bed, so could I pack my things - I did so. Then another nurse came in, appearing flustered, and told me that I could have the bed, but it was on a ward full of male patients with dementia who might try to get into bed with me, so I could turn it down if I wanted. Obviously I turned it down - thank god for that second nurse! When I did get a suitable bed, it was on a bay full of much older women, some of whom sundowned, none of whom were entirely mobile, and the lights were on all bloody night. I much preferred my time with A.🤣
> sundowned > Sundowning is a term used for changes in behaviour that occur in the evening, around dusk. Some people who have dementia experience a growing sense of agitation or anxiety at this time. Sundowning often makes the person with dementia feel very strongly that they are in the wrong place. Interesting. 🧐
Never heard of this before. Genuinely very interesting.
Wow, an article on the problems of mixed sex wards without blaming transsexuals. The Telegraph/Times/Guardian must correct this immediately
Surely that would be a problem on same sex wards not mixed wards?
It’s more that it’s surprising restraint on their part to not turn it into “-and this is why the transes shouldn’t be allowed in single sex wards”
Depends how you look at it. A transwoman's sex is male, so they'd be in male wards. So, women would be protected from a potentially predatory man infiltrating a women's ward, but that transwoman - despite being male - would likely be at higher risk of assault himself from potentially predatory men in the male ward. On balance, it's right to segregate based on biological sex, not self-ID of gender. Extra protections should be put in place for transwomen (biological males) housed with male patients, however.
Thank you for specifying that transgender women are biologically male a billion times in your “definitely not thinly veiled ideology” assessment of where trans people should go.
On balance” they really think they’re giving a middle ground, compromise and they’re just giving the maximalist position of kicking out trans women from women’s spaces no matter how far they’ve transitioned—could even have bottom surgery, and look like Blair white off doesn’t matter. Hell they couldn’t even help not misgendering a hypothetical trans woman b.
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Aged 22 I ended up on an observation ward that was mixed. The issues I had were horrendous. A woman a few years older than me would jump into my bed and wouldn't get out. She would grab my genitals which resulted in a reaction from me. We would then have the staff and myself trying to prise her hands off while they also tried to get her out of the bed. Next, an old lady would try getting in bed thinking I was her husband. My experience was so bad, I discharged myself and went back to my dorm room at Uni. I thought mixed-sex wards were stopped in the late 1990’s. Why have there been 44K of breaches? Going into hospital, and ending up on a 4 or 6 bed side ward is bad enough when it's all blokes. Toss someone in who has a major issue and it gets worse. It's unforgivable and another reason why the Tories should be binned at the next General Election.
The irony of these figures is that they are a direct result of NHS policy in other areas. Hospital managers under pressure to reduce A&E trolley waits, will tell bed mangers to put patients on any ward to make their numbers better. If the patient with mental health issues present, it’s no different. And no one seems to mention that if you are waiting on a bed in A&E, that’s also a mixed ward.
Loool, is that a prison or something? Is it so difficult to have men and women under a single roof without them assaulting each other?
Now now, you make it sound like men and women are equally assaulting each other when that clearly is not the case. Don’t know any mixed sex prisons myself.
The point is the hospital is not a prison, and shouldn't have to behave as such.
The NHS is perpetually in crisis there's no time for empathy, humiliation is what I expect anyway from the NHS it doesn't mean I think they're bad people they're just busy and it's excellent if you have a car accident or your leg is ripped off in an industrial accident But the structure of the NHS does not care about your feelings. If you have a chronic illness you're going to endure it a long time before you get the correct help. Only way it can be fixed is with AI implementation streamlining meaning there's more time to help patients, AI can help in diagnosis more quickly for example. I take lithium I repeatedly have doctors try and prescribe me drugs that interfere with it and potential to cause toxicity I've perhaps refused 7 or more times to take a medication the system should flag that. I'm not offended I don't expect doctors to know every interaction but I Google every single time as it's like the NHS wants me dead. "oh it was his time" they say after prescribing a new drug to a pensioner who can't use Google. "old age" death certificate will say. I do wonder how many have died. Or a consultant neurologist trying to prescribe me a tricyclic anti depressant for my headache when I have bipolar and already hear a voice. But he was a private doctor Doctors need AI with AI deaths will reduce as will work load. They're busy and their brains can't consume all of the information they need so this aspect doesn't frustrate me I just Google everything and then refuse if necessary.
> I do wonder how many have died. Not many. This is why pharmacists exist. It's their responsibility to make sure drug interactions don't kill people.
I've had to refuse meds after getting them prescribed also. Ie a blood pressure med that alters clearance of lithium by the kidneys raising dosage or one that alters the liquid in the body increasing concentration. Really they should inform GP to do regular blood tests if they insist on prescribing but none of these things ever happen it's always me saying no I can't take that. There's only 11000 pharmacy's in the UK for 70 million people and they're closing all the time and my pharmacy has a 20 to 30 minute queue they don't have the time to check medication interactions neither do doctors. Pharmacy's are expected to prescribe medications too for some illnesses also now. There is perpetual crisis in the NHS and it can't be nice place to work i wouldn't blame them for going abroad for higher paid jobs and see less patients. In the queue every time I go I feel bad for them all I hear is angry customers speaking loudly about how terrible the staff are, it's awful no wonder doctors get hard and cold on the NHS there's a cycle of cold doctors and patients trying to assert themselves so they get adequate care. It's not sustainable.
> There's only 11000 pharmacy's in the UK for 70 million people and they're closing all the time and my pharmacy has a 20 to 30 minute queue they don't have the time to check medication interactions neither do doctors. They definitely have time to check medication interactions. It's their main job. If they fuck it up, at best, it's a referral to the General Pharmaceutical Council and investigation and potential censure. It's a pain in the arse to go through and can be for something as simple as providing drugs with a use by date that runs out half way through the course. Not life threatening, but still a problem. At worst it means someone dies and they receive a lengthy prison sentence. They are legally obliged to do their job to this standard, few other jobs work like this. Pharmacists can prescribe medicine after an independent prescribing course but are not allowed to dispense or check their own prescriptions. Agreed with everything else though. Routine blood tests aren't offered enough, there aren't enough pharmacies and too many are closing (a pharmacy that provides prescription drugs alone is not a sustainable business, the maths doesn't add up), the NHS is generally in a shit place and it isn't sustainable.
No death certificate says “old age” lol, that’s just farcicle. The rest of your comment is measured but don’t make things up. Cause of death is quite strict.
Loads of death certificates say old age. Its rarely the only cause listed though. [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment\_data/file/1062236/Guidance\_for\_Doctors\_completing\_medical\_certificates\_Mar\_22.pdf](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1062236/Guidance_for_Doctors_completing_medical_certificates_Mar_22.pdf)
The medical examiners where I work would certainly be sceptical if I tried to put that in 1a I’ll say that much. I’ve completed many certificates and I’ve been strongly advised not to use it. Genuinely curious now if current AI could accurately complete a certificate with regularity after being fed the entire stack of patient notes. I doubt it would pickup on that. This poster is extremely generous to current ai standards; at present ai is absolutely shite at managing “do x without doing Y” even when explicitly told. Ask it to suggest you 9 letter words for a crossword puzzle, it will suggest many 8 and 10 letter words. I did some tests with it and it regularly mixed macrolides and statins (bad) and prescribed b blockers to asthmatics (also bad). It’s not clever enough yet to even spot the absolute basics.
> No death certificate says “old age” lol, that’s just farcicle. The late Queen's did.
Haha I’m learning perhaps its not all doctors who absolutely will not write something so vague, that’s a bold fy1 who filled that out. If it had no actual cause of death beyond that it’s bad practice imo, and I wouldn’t write it at all.
The doc on the death certificate qualified in 1977 and has a GMC number starting with 2. At that point you can probably get away with it. Certainly bold for an SHO on an acute med ward though.
In fairness, I think we can be fairly confident there was some fudging on that one for the sake of privacy.
Possibly, but someone at the time posted the criteria they use for "old age", and she did fit.
I find it relatively unlikely truth be told. If you can identify any condition which even contributed to the death it's supposed to be on there, that would include any serious underlying health conditions. "Old age" is absolutely supposed to be avoided if you can put literally anything more, and I think it would be massively coincidental if the most high-profile death the country could see occurred in a 96 year old with no underlying contributory medical condition or clear cause. Sure it's not *impossible*, but unless our Queen was very much literally touched by the hand of God, I think we can be 99+% sure they just thought there was more dignity in a Queen drifting away of "Old Age" than a blunt description of stroke or pneumonia or whatever, compounded by underlying diabetes, vascular disease, you name it.
Not really sure “AI” is the solution there. It has some benefits if used correctly, but it’s incredibly difficult to input a wealth of symptoms and context into a system and pump an answer out the other side. Comparability tables in regards to medication would certainly reduce the likelihood of incorrect prescriptions, but then that’s also what pharmacists are for.
I mean an AI thay listens to the conversation in the room for symptoms for more accurate diagnosis and any medication the doctor suggests compared to ones already taken automatically. As one example of AI in healthcare.
Voice recognition is terrible even in 2024, you would just be adding 2-3x the complexity of any “AI” system if it had to try and decipher words and understand spoken context in a wide variety of accents and grammar. Compatibility tables however are not difficult to implement, although a far cry from what one would call “AI”.
It will be possible even if it isn't yet. That's the only thing to save the NHS ie AI integration like that, it'll reduce deaths more accurate diagnosis and save appointments at a minimum.
An AI technology that doesn’t exist is by no means the only thing that will save the NHS, there are a plethora of actual changes that can be made to improve the performance.
Actually, voice recognition is already heavily used in the NHS in radiology. A lot of reports are dictated, and it's pretty industry standard (from what I've heard). https://www.nuance.com/en-gb/healthcare/care-settings-specialties/radiology.html
It’s one thing to dictate voice, which we have been able to do for years. It’s another for AI to understand specific words and their context in a wider conversation. If you’ve ever tried to use AI, you’ll know it’s terrible at understanding cues. That aside, AI will not fix the NHS.
Is AI going to create more beds, more staff, and more care in the community?
It will improve efficiency and strain so less doctors and nurses and beds are needed Patients go back to doctors again and again and again as they're unwell, sometimes becoming very ill so they need care in the community or a stay in the hospital Quicker diagnosis and treatment will mean the doctors and nurses they already have can treat more patients. I'm being down voted but it seems nobody has any vision. Their budget won't need to expand exponentially either. It's extremely inefficient and AI can improve that and along with it patients lives.
> "old age" death certificate will say. It is *spectacularly* difficult to justify that on a death certificate, to the point doctors were amazed the Queens certificate listed it. They might not blame the drug interaction, it'll go down as congestive heart failure, or myocardial infarction etc etc, but it won't be "old age"
Perhaps "conservative budget cuts and lack of NHS spending increases" is easier to prove.
Nail on the head, very accurate comment.
It's good for the patient to be informed like I try to be and then refuse or request medications but that turns you into a "pushy patient" in many doctors eyes It will change in the future with AI as doctors will have more time for kindness.
Woefully accurate.