Public hospital mixed wards includes breast cancer surgery patients

@June1952 and not all private hospitals have an ER department.  We are always going to have a 2 tiered health system, but it would be good if told you could have transferred over, and also would be good if our public health system would reinstate separate wards/rooms for males and one for females. 

Don't get me started on the food they have prepacked and brought in to feed the patients in the public system.   

@Keeping_positive1, You are so right.  We struggle to pay private cover but on the night the private hospital was not taking ambulances.  We were not aware we could insist on being transferred over ... a lesson ....

I would prefer some noisy visitors at visiting hour, than a male patient using a portable urinal without closing the curtains around him!  My point is about public hospitals seeing it as OK to have mixed wards, not about noise factors. We can't really compare the two scenarios equally.

@June1952 that must have been very uncomfortable for your husband.  I think we deserve to have separate wards/room in Australia, whether public or private.

It isn't just those with private health funds that can escape a mixed ward, we have to keep in mind if a person ends up in an emergency situation they will more than likely be taken to a public hospital and then placed into a mixed ward.  This happens a lot, so don't think because a person has private health funds that they have the choice.  I feel some get complacent about this issue because they are paying into private health funds.  

When a female (no lady) sat on the bed with her legs far apart so the "short and curlys" etc. were on full display .... this is really common sense and self-respect.  "Not required to be respectable" is one thing but that was disgusting and quite unacceptable.  My husband did not want to be accused of sexual harassment from afar. 😀
You should have asked staff to intervene if you were not able to ask for some quiet as you recovered.

@June1952

Fair enough, although I am not sure that anyone in hospital should  be required to be respectable, getting well is hard enough. Mixed wards are tricky but single sex can be as hard. My worst experience was sharing a room (private!) with a woman who
had hordes of noisy visitors and  listened to her tv (no use of headphones) all through the night! My last mixed ward was an exercise in consideration by comparison. Rest and hospitals are a contradiction in terms however, no matter how good the care. 

Same gender wards are hard to manage these days with most hospitals at full bed capacity and patient turnover. If anyone in a mixed ward and having issues you should,speak to nursing staff and see if any leeway available for another ward or area. Our local,health service  recently opened a new hospital and it has mostly single bedrooms in a ward area .

My husband was in a public ward with women and he asked the staff to pull the curtain around him so he was not thought to be perving on the women (who did not take any measures to be respectable).  He was embarrassed.
Agree, a terrible situation.  It worked OK as separate wards for all those years.