Privacy and Dignity

Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is committed to privacy, dignity and patient safety, and as such complies with the Government's requirement to eliminate mixed-sex accommodation, except where it is the patient's best interest or reflects personal choice, for example in critical care and specialist care settings where the clinical safety needs of the patient take priority.

To support this we have the necessary facilities to provide sleeping areas, toilets and washing facilities that are separate for men, women and people who do not recognise themselves as any gender. In hospital this can mean different things:

• a single room
• in a mixed ward, where men and women are in separate bays or rooms

Toilet and washing facilities should be easy to get to and patients do not have to go through other sex sleeping accommodation to get to these.

We take privacy, dignity and safety of all our service users seriously and have policies to support this, which are monitored and reviewed by our Quality Committee, which in itself reports to the Board. During the COVID-19 pandemic the national requirement to report mixed-sex accommodation was paused, however DCHFT maintained this and continued to be committed to privacy, dignity and safety for all our patients.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

At DCHFT we are committed to a culture of equality, diversity and inclusion. Our policies and practice cover all protected characteristics:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

All policies and procedures are subject to an Equalities Impact and Compliance Assessment.

For any queries, please contact our Patient Experience Team by calling 0800 7838058 or emailing pals@dchft.nhs.uk