Old woman mad she shared hospital room with man.
If the word “dread” comes to mind when you think about being admitted to hospital, Patricia Grant can give you another little thought to worry about.
It’s no secret that, when every hospital bed is taken, unfortunate souls in a clogged-up emergency department can be stuck there for days before an in-patient bed becomes available.
But what about a man and a woman — perfect strangers — sharing the same hospital room?
That’s what is happening to Grant’s 89-year-old mother, Mary Workman of Kemptville, who was admitted to the Queensway Carleton on Nov. 11 with a broken hip.
For Grant, from Spencerville, it is an indignity and a violation of an elderly woman’s privacy to be put into the same room with a man for the past five days.
Grant was already upset with the “cold” meals she says her mother is getting and the small fortune she and her siblings are shelling out for hospital parking.
Her mother has also been in four different rooms since arriving and undergoing surgery.
But Grant, a retired nurse, says the latest situation her mother finds herself in is over the top.
“If this was Dalton McGuinty’s mother, would you have done this?” Grant says she asked a nurse on Wednesday. She says she didn’t get a reply.
Grant says she blew her stack when her brother phoned to tell her about their mother’s new roomie. “I said, ‘What?’
“I lost it,’ she says. “I’m sorry, but I’m one of those people who can put up with a lot, but don’t push me past that limit, and, yeah, they did.”
Grant phoned her mother at the hospital as soon as she found out.
“She’s crying,” Grant says. “She hasn’t slept all night long. She said the man snored. She said, ‘I was afraid. I don’t want to be in a room with a man. I was afraid to sleep.’ She’s 89 years old.”
To make matters worse, this is her mother’s first hospital stay in 40 years.
“Can you imagine the culture shock?”
Grant says the situation is depressing her mother. However, Grant met the man for the first time Saturday and says he’s a very nice gentleman.
But, says Workman, “I don’t want a man in my bedroom, I can tell you that. Why can’t they put a woman in a room with another woman and a man with a man?”
When Grant called the Queensway Carleton for an explanation, she was told a policy is in place to allow mixed-gender bed assignments. It was approved in February 2006 and was last reviewed in April.
Says Grant: “We’re rural. We’re not into gender neutral.”
So she told the hospital manager to whom she was speaking: “‘You get my mother out of that room.’”
He told her he couldn’t make any promises.
The policy is hardly unique to the Queensway Carleton, but it has come under criticism in Canada and other countries, including Britain, which has plans to end the practice.
In Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., last year, a heart-attack patient was subjected to an unpleasant experience in a mixed-gender ward. The woman witnessed a man masturbating in a bed across the room and another giving her the eye. In another incident in the Northern Ontario city, a 65-year-old woman complained about a male patient touching her and a nurse who told her that she “still attracted the fellas.”
Like other hospitals, the Queensway Carleton approved the policy in order to be able to place men and women in the same room if the bed situation demands it. Mixed-gender rooming is used as a last resort, though it does happen occasionally, says Dr. Andrew Falconer, the Queensway Carleton’s chief of staff.
He says the hospital’s preference is to segregate patients by gender, but “there are a few circumstances where we are unable to do that.”
For example, if a woman in emergency is in need of a bed and the only one available is in a double room already occupied by a man, the bed is offered to her. Especially with the elderly, Falconer says it is important to get them out of emergency as soon as possible and to in-patient services because care there is more suited to their needs.
As well, mixed-gender assignments are sometimes necessary to help control infections, which move quickly in hospitals. The hospital doesn’t want to put an incoming patient into a room where a same-gender patient has an infection that is communicable or contagious.
“Rather than expose that patient to the risk ... we would admit them to another room, even if it is mixed gender,” Dr. Falconer says.
Conversely, mixed-gender situations might arise during bed shortages when male and female patients are isolated in a room with the same infections, as Grant says is apparently the case with her mother and the man. It’s suspected that her mother has a stomach/intestinal bug.
Dr. Falconer says the hospital tells patients, on admission, of the possibility of mixed-gender rooming. The information is in the hospital’s patient handbook, too.
Dr. Falconer says he had not looked into Workman’s situation yet to see if she was told the hospital was planning to move her into a room with a man. Grant says her mother wasn’t consulted.
Spokeswoman Judy Brown says complaints such as the ones in Sault Ste. Marie have never arisen at the Queensway Carleton.
The Ottawa and Montfort hospitals also advise patients of the possibility of mixed-gender rooming. If it arises, the patient is consulted before being put into a room with someone from the opposite sex.
“If the patient would rather not, we then ask someone else,” Montfort spokeswoman Cindy Demontigny says.
She also says mixed-gender situations are sometimes *necessary “to eliminate *congestion (in emergency).”
Meanwhile, Grant says her mother has recovered well from surgery.
A pin was inserted in her broken hip. She’s up and about in a walker and feels no pain.
But Grant says her mother has lost weight because she doesn’t like the hospital food.
Grant says she hopes her mother will be transferred to the Kemptville District Hospital this week to continue her recovery.
Is something bothering you? Please contact
[email protected]
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/...328/story.html
hahahahahaha
culture shock!!!!
;$
