Dear Hospitals: please rethink your bans on visitors for female patients

Well intentioned policies to designed to keep female patients safe in hospitals may have the opposite effect.

Media outlets are publishing the details of precautions South Florida hospital administrators are implementing to keep non-COVID 19 patients "safe" from exposure to the coronavirus. A recent Miami Herald article reported the precautions of four South Florida hospitals include suspension of visitors (with a few, limited exceptions). 

While this policy of barring family, friends, husbands, boyfriends, relatives from visiting their female relatives, spouse or partner in the hospital portends to keep the female patient "safe" from exposure to COVID-19  the policy may well have the unintended effect of exposing the female patient to the risk of sexual assault and rape from male hospital employees.

It's not like it hasn't happened before. In Florida.

In February 2020 a 30-year old physical therapist employed at a Tampa hospital was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a female hospital patient (emphasis mine):

TAMPA, Fla. — A 30-year-old physical therapist was arrested Monday after deputies say he was caught sexually assaulting a hospital patient. 

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said late Monday night, an alarm began to sound in the room of a 75-year-old patient at St Joseph's Hospital South. When a nurse went to check out a live feed from inside the room, she said she saw Regginald Jackson sexually assaulting the woman, according to the sheriff's office. 

Jackson is employed as a physical therapist at the hospital in Tampa, according to detectives. 

Detectives said they tried to question Jackson about the incident, but he refused to comment on the allegations.  

Jackson was charged with sexual battery and booked into the Orient Road Jail.

In January 2020 a former Cape Coral male nurse accused of raping a female patient was found guilty.

CAPE CORAL, FLA — UPDATE: The jury has found Jeovanni Hechavarria guilty on all counts of Sexual Battery. The State asked that Hechavarria remain in custody and the Judge agreed. 

He was sentenced to  30 years in prison.

It's not clear if these "no visitation" hospital policies were developed by the hospitals themselves or mandated by the state. In either case and as can often occur, policies that sound great; designed to "do good" by protecting people from one type of risk can cause more harm by exposing them to another.