Coed hospital rooms

I came across the below link regarding coed hospital rooms. It got me to thinking with all the stuff in the news recently about bathroom gender. Have any of you ever shared a hospital room with a patient of the opposite sex? If the situation arises would you have any objection to sharing a room with a person of the opposite sex? If there was a curtain in the room separating the beds and providing privacy I would not have a problem. During the day visitors of both sexes come into the room to visit. I have been in pre-op and recovery rooms with opposite gender people on several occasions. Although I could not see them I could hear what was being said and taking place.

The author of the article makes some very valid points.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/are-we-ready-for-coed-hos_b_618028.html

I don't see having a problem with mixed gender hospital recovery rooms. After all they do have privacy curtains. .though that would depend on hospital policy as to how wards are conducted. . privacy being the key issue as modesty plays an important role together with age / health criteria

I think it's rather more a fancy than realistic expectations apart from the obvious

Would you like to see your mother / MIL / wife or SO in a state of distress induced or otherwise ogled by all & sundry ??

Sure, I'll share a room with a patient of the opposite sex but only if the patient was my gynecologist, in that case, I'd share the bed with him hahaha lol

Back in the 1970's as a fairly new RN working in a small rural hospital in the Midwest I had a husband /wife come into the ED after a car accident. Both had to be admitted overnight and asked if they could be in the same room. While not the norm and probably never done before in this catholic hospital, I saw no reason for their request to be denied.

After all, they had 3 kids. The nun who was the head nurse at the time was not to happy, but I looked right at her and asked her if she knew how they got 3 kids, adding that I figured they must have slept together 3 times and that they asked to be in the same room, not sleep in the same bed.

It's common practice to have shared hospital rooms in Canada, many times a 4 bed room, co ed.

I don´t think i would have any problems sharing a room with a woman

The idea of a "private" room in a US hospital involves having about 10 strangers per hour of either sex, walk in to your room unannounced. These people may be medical, custodial, or food service. Once you have adjusted to the frequent intrusion of these strangers, the presence of a room mate would be of little consequence. I believe that at least half of the patients would be too ill to care who shared the room with them and many of the remainder would be OK with an opposite sex roommate.

Back in 1972, due to some old fool running a stop sign and broadsiding me and the motorcycle I was riding, I spent 30 days in a hospital ward. If I am remembering correctly, there were at least 24 beds, and talk about a 24 hr zoo.... t'was an experience but not one that I would ever want to repeat

Elaine

Back in the 1970's as a fairly new RN working in a small rural hospital in the Midwest, I had a husband/wife come in to the ED after a car accident. Both had to be admitted overnight and asked if they could be in the same room. While not the norm and probably never done before in this catholic hospital, I saw no reason for their request to be denied. After all, they had 3 kids. The nun who was the head nurse at the time was not to happy, but I looked right at her and asked her if she knew how they got 3 kids, and added that I figured they must have slept together 3 times and that they asked to be in the same room, not sleep in the same bed.

It's common practice to have shared hospital rooms in Canada, many times a 4 bed room, co ed.

If they were husband and wife, i don't know why anyone would've considered that a problem.

Personally, i would ask for a separate room, hoping to score some private time with the nun 😉

I am not sure that this is an idea that is going to make much headway in the very near future. I remember working in hospitals (a very long time ago, I admit) where male and female patients were not even on the same floor. While it is true that visitors of both sexes come into a room to visit a friend or relative, there are times when one wouldn't want them overhearing what is going on in the next bed, regardless of that patient's gender, and I think that becomes more acute depending on the nature of the patient's condition. Would you want a teenage boy next to a female who just had a mastectomy, for example. On the other hand, it is true that pre-op and PACU units are mixed gender and many only use privacy curtains when treating a patient, but that is a very limited case.

If I need to be in the hospital due to accident, injury, illness, or post op, I have got more important things to worry about than the gender of the person in the other bed. That person has a reason for being there too, and it has nothing to do with me.

Just rhetorical but, If we feel it necessary to separate hospital patients by gender, what do we do with gay patients? And whom does a transgender patient room with? If I'm in the hospital, I'm not worried about any of that.

I am a male and I don't mind sharing a room with a female patient. WHY ? .there will be more nurses coming into the room, but there be a time as I'll be in. .Well you know what I mean

Before I was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis ( diagnosed as an adult ) I would often be admitted into a bay . There would be 3, 5 or 7 females and I'd even up the number . There were never any males present . There would be a male bay next door .

Now I'm diagnosed I always get a room of my own . This is due to cross contamination rules. However, in ICU ( Critical Care ) there are no separate male/female areas. I've been placed next to males many times . This really doesn't bother me as I'm too ill to care or take much notice .

A few months back I was placed next to an unconscious male . He was handcuffed to his bed and two prison officers sat guard 24/7. He'd tried to commit suicide in the prison. I found it somewhat amusing that he was totally out of it , yet he was handcuffed to the bed. It's not like he was going to get up and do a runner anytime soon .

I actually don't care which gender I share with , there are curtains to separate . I always used to chat with the other patients . We'd generally tell one other why we were in hospital. I found it more uncomfortable if a Dr came to see me during visiting times when I was in the shared bays. As everyone would go quiet and listen to what the Dr was saying to me .

Nik

I prefer a private room If not available I don't care who I am with as long as they aren't contagious to me and I'm not contagious to them . Hospitals are for getting well and healthy and back to homeostasis as quickly as possible and infection rates per capita world wide are down considerably. Hospital cleanliness has made great strides .

Nope anytime I stayed in a hospital it has always been another woman in my room. I think the only time they allow coed is when the patients are a husband and wife. 😃

When I first started training , we had separate wards for males and females patients whether they were medical or surgical patients, this was the norm. Side rooms were often kept for patients who needed isolated. Nowadays you are more likely to have bays on a ward that single sex instead of the ward being single sex. Although at times due to bed shortages you will occasionally get a bay that is mixed with both men and women.

As Nik has mentioned , critical care ( ICU, HDU, CCU) has always been mixed sex with both male and female patients nursed next to each other. Which can make the more alert and orientated feel a bit uncomfortable during the ward rounds , procedures or general doctor visits. The nature and layout of most ICU's and HDU's makes it impossible for segregating patients based on gender.

No problem coed... As long as he/she didn't snore! Good question....

In the hospitals where I have worked, rooms were either male or female. If a husband and wife were admitted, some of the hospitals would allow them to be roomed together, others would not.

Private rooms are becoming more and more common - and more and more important - as patients are requiring isolation for MRSA, VRE, etc. While much of the world has stopped isolating MRSA, there are still places (like Pennsylvania) that require it, so it continues. It is not uncommon for us to have 50 beds blocked for isolation (of 200) on a given day!

At this point in my life, I wouldn't care, but as a teenager, for example, I probably would have.

I wouldn't have wanted a the teenage female on the other side of the curtain to hear the doctor tell me to roll on my side (:.

Interesting how that would have bothered me then, but now I couldn't care less.

I did share a hospital room with a girl but we both six years old. There wasn't much privacy either but at six it was no big deal. I was more concerned about the shots I was getting. These days most hospital rooms are private anyway except for intensive care and those are coed but the patients are really to sick to worry about that.

I had a male family member with a traumatic brain injury and when they were first admitted to an ICU Room the room had a woman right next door, who also had a brain injury. Under the circumstances we didn't care and neither did the other family.

I once shared a bathroom with a guy. I had bladder problems and went to the toilet every 5min. He was so concerned about me although he did not even know me. We met the following morning. Sweet man.

I found out that he had stomach problems and he used the public toilets the whole time so that I can be comfortable. Some people are so considerate.

I had a form of bacterial pneumonia when I was 16, so I had to wear a full faced oxygen mask. Sure glad I was in a private room because I would have died of mortification. Since I had the oxygen mask on my temperature was taken rectally. On at least 2 occassions my rectal temperature was taken in front of my mother and a neighbour, who visited me. That was embarrassing enough without a roommate !

I shared a bathroom with a guy once. He was very worried about my comfort the whole time. A real gentleman. So considerate.

It's common practice to have shared hospital rooms in Canada, many times a 4 bed room, co ed.

I'm in Canada and I've never heard of co-ed hospital rooms. I'd sign myself out AMA, even if I was on death's door, before allowing myself to be placed in a co-ed or a 4 bed room. Fortunately, I've only been placed in 2 and 3 bed rooms (the latter decades ago).

I'm in Canada and I've never heard of co-ed hospital rooms. I'd sign myself out AMA, even if I was on death's door, before allowing myself to be placed in a co-ed or a 4 bed room. Fortunately, I've only been placed in 2 and 3 bed rooms (the latter decades ago).

I've been lucky in having only once having to endure a hospital stay and that was in a single room. But my wife, who experienced far too many hospital stays, always used to say that while single rooms were best - but more expensive - she preferred 4 beds to a double room any time.

Why? Because with a 4 bed room you can sort of disappear into the background and have a stay more or less undisturbed by social interactions of co-patients if you should wish. While in a double room you are more or less obliged to observe and follow the dictates of social contact and acknowledge the other patient's existence. In a 4 bed room, you be more anonymous, to a degree at least.

Also, statistics would suggest that you would have more probability of encountering someone agreeable if there were 3 other people to choose from, than only 1 other person.

I've never heard of co-ed hospital rooms. My only hospital stay was in my teens and I was in a specifically adolescent section of the place and that was very definitively segregated by gender. We didn't even share a corridor with any girl patients.

Ive only been admitted to a hospital a handful of times. The first one I was 9 and it was a time when people stayed overnight after surgery and I had my tonsils out and it was a ward with probably 12 beds and curtains only. I think it was coed but I was so young I’m not sure. I was hospitalized in Finland on student exchange for a couple days and it was at least 3 other people in the room and I think it was co Ed but I was vomiting frequently and I’m not positive. Once I had a private room once I shared a room with an incontintent man who was bedridden and nurses and aides were frequently in the room. Once I stayed in the hall overnight with a screen while I waited for a room to open. The private room was the best for getting any sleep and privacy.