Public hospital mixed wards includes breast cancer surgery patients

Oh my god I have such mixed feeling about this. When our oldest son was 18y.o he was in hospital for a week with an MRSA infection in his hand & had two surgeries to clean it out. For the first couple of days he was in a room with a women in her 70's. he is a pretty chilled kid & was polite etc but still felt uncomfortable. He was happy once they diagnosed the MRSA & they isolated him in a single room.
The best room mate I have had in the 10 years & probably 5 or 6 multi night stints was actually when I had the Lat Dorsi surgery & was in for about 7 or 8 nights. I had a young fellow who had either a broken back or pelvis after a mountain bike accident, He was quiet, kept his headphone in for tv ( so did I)  he couldn't get out of bed, so the bathroom was all mine !! & whilst the curtain was closed most of the time because I was not particularly well or chatty while vomiting for 2 days; once I felt a bit better he was great, his visitors were quiet & respectful & we chatted occassionally about crashes off bikes
(kids....not me!) 
Carmel

@Tonya and in spite of all our more sophisticated medical equipment these days, they cannot manage to separate the sexes, smh.
@Zoffiel you would think they could use those wheels!
:)

It's vile.
Until such time as it's acceptable for a woman to wander around with her top off, it is reasonable to provide some sort of division between the genders when no-one can rely on tatty curtains being, or staying, closed. It's busy in there. I get it. But a bit of privacy doesn't go astray.
I am no prude, but the sight of an old guy with his gonads hanging out is enough to put me off my lunch. Not his fault, the poor old bugger, but still...
As for noisy roommates,  WTF? Does the whole bloody family have to squeeze into the room? I've had people (briefly) sit on my bed when visiting someone in the next 'cubicle'.
Yeah, I'm far too grumpy for hospital in general, but some things can be done to ease the stress. The beds are on wheels for a reason.

I’m an’old school’ nurse and we managed to separate the sexes back in the’70s,80s and 90s no problem.
I wouldn’t like to share a hospital bathroom or room with strange men I didn’t know.Although private,I had to share a 4bedder room with women after my mastectomy op at a public hosp and one of them screamed out all night- she couldn’t reach the buzzer.I ended up dragging my drip around to attend to her.

I had surgery on both breasts so I stayed for two nights.  Next to me was a man with some prostate issue, was easy enough to hear the doctors talking to him.  LIkewise I am sure he heard all about my breast concerns.  
In the adjoining room there was mixed genders also, couldn't they sort this out.. really it isn't that difficult.  It has to do with staffing issues and not putting patients first!

I have worked in a government department and understand the limits, but really we should be aiming higher!

@gumnut
It sounds like a simple solution to ask hospital staff to tell the noisy patient to turn the noise down but I found that busy staff were extremely unwilling to get into the issue (both parties paying for private hospital treatment). The care overall was good but the sleep disruption was hard. I got moved to a single room after a particularly bad night. As the other party was demanding and difficult, you didn’t really want to behave in the same way! 

I work in the surgical ward of a public hospital. We run at pretty much 100% capacity every day. For the vast majority of time we have girls and boys rooms. Nobody ever wants to mix the rooms but occasionally we have to. We will move people around later on if we can.  Simple fact is if you've had surgery you need a bed and sometimes it's  not in an ideal spot.The logisics of managing a smooth running ward is probably far more difficult than what people would think. Mostly it's some form of organised chaos. The time frame between discharges and incoming patients is a very fine line. .

 90 % of the time our  BC patients are given a single room.  If that is impossible due to the acuity of the ward, or patients that are expected to go home but don't things can get interesting.

  Our nurses will shuffle, outlie and do what ever they can to give the single room and keep same sex rooms.
It would be an absolute last choice to put a BC patient in a room with men.
Maybe it depends who's running the ward at whatever hospital as well.

Hello all
I had a public hospital shared / mixed gender ward when I had my mastectomy + surgery last November. At first I had my own ICU nurse sitting next to me as there was no bed for me in intensive care. I was then in the cardio ward due to complications where the care was excellent and I was so sick I didn't really notice who was next to me but I am well aware of the discomfort that can be felt when in a mixed ward. I then moved to a two bed room with a gentleman who was recovering from stomach/bowel surgery. It wasn't ideal but I did my best at managing the bathroom sharing and he didn't have noisy visitors (I think it was during post covid restrictions with less visitors). I would prefer a non mixed ward but the care was good and I am grateful in Australia that we have such a good public health system.
It would however be a lot more challenging if the person/people that you shared with were disrespectful or overly noisy.

I have also had varied experiences with my elderly Mum who had a private room in a private hospital with one other lady who had lots of noisy visitors and also had the tv up loud all the time; she has also been in a large public hospital in a shared mixed room.

Not at my nearby private hospital!  They get top quality meals!  :)

Ha ha - the same crappy food now goes to the private system !!!