End for hospital wards (From South Wales Argus)

End for hospital wards

9:39am Saturday 23rd December 2006

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TRADITIONAL hospital wards are set to be phased out in Gwent in favour of single rooms.

Single rooms will become the norm for patients treated in Gwent during the next 10 years, ushering in what health watchdogs call "a sea-change in care."

Two multi-million pound NHS hospital projects in the Gwent valleys will lead the way. The first patients could be recovering in rooms of their own inside three or four years, when the first of a new generation of Gwent hospitals - to serve Blaenau Gwent and Caerphilly - are opened.

The concept will then extend to hospitals across the rest of Gwent, proposed in the £1 billion Clinical Futures programme.

Patients and public have this week visited an exhibition of three single room designs at Ystrad Mynach Hospital, a stone's throw from the site for the £133 million, 268-bed Caerphilly Local General Hospital (LGH).

That project and the £48 million, 108-bed Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan project, at the former Corus steelworks site in Ebbw Vale, will be the first to have all single rooms.

Greater power to limit spread of infection is seen as a major advantage of single rooms, which also offer patients improved privacy and dignity, minimise the need for transfers, and allow 24-hour admission without disruption to others.

They will also offer quieter areas for rest and sleep, independence to control environment, for instance television, radio, and temperature, provide privacy for religious or cultural practices, and confidentiality for discussions, examinations and treatments.

"We must plan hospitals to serve for the next 40 or 50 years and we have tended in the past to design buildings then fit in the services we need. With Clinical Futures we are designing services and then the buildings to house them," said Sue Rodway, project director for the Caerphilly LGH.

"Patients' needs are changing and the single rooms concept recognises this."

Observation of patients in single rooms has been a concern. David Kenny, patient and public information officer with Gwent Community Health Council, said members initially had mixed views but were now generally favourable.

"There will be a sea-change in care and there are strong arguments in terms of issues like infection control," he said.

"Single rooms are something private patients are already used to, and perhaps this is the NHS catching up."

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