Some memories of Hospital
The operation went very well and the girls recovered very fast and got very bored even faster. I continue to be somewhat amazed at the lack of organisation in Hospitals, a few examples follow:
- The welcome letter says to ring the ward before you leave home to check a bed is available, the letter says you need to arrive at the ward by 7:30, but in fact they don’t staff the ward until about 7:30. Not many people live that close to the hospital!
- When we arrived at the ward the notice above the WHITE phone said use the RED phone to request entry
- We arrived at 7:25, bearing in mind the fact that the letter said arrive by 7:30. However the ward did not open until 7:30
- The ward was only half full
- In the end they decided to close it and moved us downstairs into another ward
- The hospital have out-sourced the TV’s, Phones and Parking. Most of my interactions with the staff revolved around resolving issues with TV’s, Phones and Parking, and also private medical insurance refunds.
- Probably ½ of all nurse and doctor time was spent gathering and/or checking previously gathered information, or in taking trivial observations that required no training to take, (just to interpret).
- Only two drink brands were available for the children, orange and blackcurrant cordial. Do these people have kids! Given the importance of getting the kids to drink plenty following operations, a few of the more popular brands might have been a good idea. Mine flatly refused to drink the brands available so I had to leave two poorly kids, an hour after their operation to get Ribena from the hospital shop. Choice was similarly limited to 3 varieties of cereal and one flavour of Jam!
- Ear plugs were not provided, (I took some though – I have been to hospital too many times to forget the essentials)
- Headphones for the bed-side TV’s and Radios were not available in one ward at all, but were available for every bed on another. Supply of head-phones was out-sourced! Not surprisingly the noise level on the ward without headphones was intolerable unless you had a TV in front of your face all day with the volume up!
