§ Mr. Michael Marshallasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) what evidence he has received that patients do not like mixed wards in hospitals;
(2) how many hospital mixed wards were available to National Health Service patients in each of the years 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1976.
§ Mr. MoyleA number of letters critical of mixed wards have been received by my Department and I am aware of a recent newspaper article which resulted in some of the letters to me. In the main these do not indicate that the writer has actually been in a mixed ward. But I do know that some people feel strongly about this.
I have no national information on the number of mixed wards, and such information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. But undoubtedly they
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England 1973 As at30th September1976 Administrative and clerical staff … … 77,108 98,400* Doctors (including general medical practitioners) … … 49,897 53,741 Nurses (excluding agency nurses)(4) … … 304,359 339,000* Ancillary staff … … 165,135 173,500* *These figures are provisional. (1) All figures are whole-time equivalents except for general medical practitioners (numbers). (2) 1973 figures include staff of local health authorities employed on work transferred to the NHS on reorganisation. (3) Excludes clinical assistant appointments, which are usually held part-time by general medical practitioners. (4) In 1973 there were 4,158 agency nurses; in 1976, 1,800 (provisional). are more frequent where hospitals are under pressure and introducing desirable changes such as more day surgery and day investigations. Some modern wards have been designed to operate quite satisfactorily with separate bed-bays for different sexes. I am not aware that there are in general complaints about these.