Female wards off-limits to unsupervised male care staff – WRHA
Published:Wednesday | June 2, 2021 | 12:12 AMHopeton Bucknor/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Male healthcare staff are not allowed to interface with girls and women on predominantly female hospital wards without due oversight.
That’s the word from St Andrade Sinclair, regional director at the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA), who said that non-observance of that protocol would be a breach.
Sinclair was speaking with The Gleaner against the background of the arrest and charge of 45-year-old Damion Bigby, a male nursing assistant who is accused of fondling a 15-year-old patient at the Noel Holmes Hospital in Hanover.
Bigby is expected to face the Hanover Parish Court on Wednesday.
While not pronouncing on Bigby’s guilt or innocence, the WRHA director said that the nursing assistant would have breached protocol by interacting with the girl without the oversight of a female nurse.
“We have male nursing assistants all over Jamaica, but none have access to a female ward,” Sinclair told The Gleaner.
“People can trespass and go to places that they are not assigned, but in general, a male employee cannot go into a predominantly female ward.”
Sinclair was emphatic that Bigby would not have been authorised to be on the ward unsupervised.
The only divergence from that gender policy, he said, applied to high-traffic specialist areas like the Accident and Emergency Department or the operating theatre “where you have a lot of people involved, male and female,” said Sinclair.
In the wake of the alleged incident, the WRHA boss said that security is being beefed up at Noel Holmes to safeguard against the risk of any recurrence.
The 15-year-old student was admitted to Noel Holmes Hospital on May 19 after she reportedly tried to commit suicide.
Around midnight on May 21, she was reportedly lying in bed on the ward when Bigby fondled her.