Mixed-sex “accommodation” in NHS hospitals will be abolished within the next 12 months, the Health Secretary Alan Johnson announced at the annual conference of the Royal College of Nursing. He admitted, however, that Labour used the “wrong wording” in its 2001 manifesto, which pledged to ban “mixed-sex wards”.
Mix up over mixed wards
He said the party should have used the phrase “mixed-sex accommodation” instead, adding there was nothing wrong with having a large ward with separate bays for men and women as long as privacy could always be preserved. “There should not be any patient in accommodation where they are mixing with other sexes if they don’t want to be, unless there is any emergency reason why they have to be.”
