Patient dignity and privacy: same-sex accommodation

Every patient has the right to receive high-quality care that is safe and effective, with decisions based on the needs of each individual patient, not the constraints of the environment or the convenience of staff. The hospital environment, familiar to doctors, nurses and other health professionals, is unfamiliar for the patient and is often a bewildering, extremely hectic world in which the patient finds that he or she is just one of many. Already anxious in having to deal with his or her condition, the patient can feel vulnerable, unassertive and dependent and almost incidental to the complex process of care.