A SHORTAGE of beds at the QMC forced doctors and nurses to break protocol and put men and women patients on a ward together.
All wards at the QMC and City Hospital are supposed to segregate male and female patients.
But on two occasions in one month this same-sex rule was breached.
Board papers for the hospitals' trust reveal that men and women patients had to be put together because of "severe pressure on beds".
In the first breach one woman was placed with two men in the medical high dependency unit at the Queen's Medical Centre.
And in the second instance involved two woman patients being placed at the male end of the coronary care unit, also at QMC.
The trust said it would be "increasing critical care capacity" to make sure such mistakes were not repeated.
