Mixing Teenagers with Adult patients

[BoogiePop]

Recently, the administration had one of their "great ideas" , and decided to open another ward next to the teenagers ward. Problem is, this ward treats adult population, and the only thing separating both wards is a large door.

For you to get a basic idea, a typical ward in my hospital is composed of two hallways, one hallway is for male patients while the other is for female patients, and in the center is the nursing station. The teenager ward is one hallway to the left of the nursing station then the right hallway is this new "ward" they recently open, where they treat adults with different diagnosis, but most of them are polysubstance dependence.

What worries me is that the only thing separating this two populations is one big door (wich is in pretty bad shape thanks to an angry patient who decided to displace his anger against it), and nothing else. Patients sometime nteract with each other by talking or sometimes even yelling at each other when they are near the nursing station :argue:. Once I had this realy angry teen who just jumped the nursing station and passed to the adult area to fight with another patient . What's also a big problem is that we now have female and male patient, very close to each other! and reports of sexual aproaches have been increasing.:redbeathe:up:

Now my question is, Do any of you know of any federal law or Joint Comission standar that prohibits this two populations from interacting with each other? that would be of great help, since I pretty much want to refuse keep working there, until some measures are taken that will limit the interactions that are now taking place.

Thanks in advance!!:wink2:

[aloevera]

we keep our adolescents on a separate locked unit (ages 12-17)

I have never seen them mixed with the adults...as for gender, we cannot keep the males away from the females...if things look like they are getting too chummy, we use a 10' rule for them...and try to keep them apart....difficult at times, for sure I imagine especially on nights..

[medsurgrnco, BSN, RN]

Sorry I don't know of any such restriction as you are seeking. But I wouldn't like your setup as it sounds very unsafe for the adolescents. We have both male and female adult patients sleeping on the same hallway with staff present on the hall to monitor.

[zeeman]

No such standard exists, main concern of accrediting bodies is that pt's are receivng active treatment and that they are doing so in a relatively safe environment. Any steps taken to reduce restraints and reduce environmental risks for suicide are taken seriously. I work in a facility with one young adult unit and the rest of units are generally patients over the age of 25. There are many cases of young adults who improve on more adult units, citing their peers as the cause of their persistant behavioral dyscontrol.