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• Patients & visitors | Your stay in hospital |
  • Single sex accommodation

Single sex accommodation

Your privacy, our responsibility

The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust is committed to ensuring that all patients are treated with respect and that their dignity and privacy are maintained at all times.

We believe that providing single sex accommodation is an effective way of helping to achieve this goal.

Single sex accommodation may be provided in two ways:

• single sex wards (i.e. the whole ward is occupied by either men or women but not both)
• single sex bays or rooms within mixed wards (i.e. bays or rooms which accommodate either men or women, but not both; with designated single sex toilets and washing facilities within or adjacent to the bay or room).

In exceptional circumstances in which a patient needs urgent or specialist care in areas such as Accident and Emergency, the Intensive Care Unit, the Coronary Care Unit or recovery, mixing men and women may be unavoidable.

We will work to resolve such situations as quickly as possible and will keep patients and their families informed about our actions. During these times, our priority will be to maintain patients’ privacy and dignity.

In line with the national programme we are working to have all wards as single sex.

If you have any concerns about privacy and dignity, please speak to the ward sister/charge nurse in the first instance or the matron for the area. Alternatively, you can contact PALS (the Patient Advice and Liaison Service) or the Patient Relations team on 0118 322 8338. You can also e-mail in any concerns or comments to talktous@royalberkshire.nhs.uk

Children and young people

It is recognised that for many children and young people, clinical need and age and stage of development may take precedence over gender considerations and the mixing of the sexes is reasonable, or may even be preferred.

There is evidence that many young people find great comfort from sharing with others of their own age and often this outweighs their concerns about mixed sex rooms. If a young person or their carer would prefer us to consider single sex accommodation then please discuss this with the nurse in charge who will endeavour to accommodate the request.