At North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust we are committed to delivering the highest standards of privacy and dignity for our patients.
Director of nursing and patient safety Sue Smith oversees an eliminating mixed sex accommodation working group to look at how best to continually improve standards and care for patients.
Sue said: “We have done a lot of work to upgrade bathrooms and toilets in clinical areas to improve the quality of facilities we offer our patients. We have also developed information technology to alert staff to whether bays are allocated to men or women. We have communicated the importance of same sex accommodation and staff awareness is high. As a result, we have now eliminated mixed sex accommodation*.”
Some examples of where the trust has successfully tackled mixed sex accommodation include:
- Improving signage to bathroom and toilet facilities
- Staff training to improve awareness of where the nearest same sex toilet facilities are for patients on a ward
- Improved information for staff, patients and carers
- Information technology that helps prevent patients being accommodated with people of the opposite sex
- Daily exception reports that enable each case to be investigated and inform appropriate action planning
- Messages communicated on plasma TV screens around the hospital premises and GP practices
*It is acceptable to mix when there is a clinical justification, for example, critical care.