Heart attack

Thursday, November 16, 2017

N.H.S. Hospital Ward Experiences

Being in a hospital ward is something of an eye-opener. I realise it's not supposed to be like a hotel, but it could be a little more comfortable. For visitors and not just the patients. The chair in the side room where Carol is at present is made of plastic, no doubt because the surface of it is easier to clean and so help prevent infection. But sit on one of these for any length of time and you'll discover how uncomfortable they can be, besides the fact you keep sliding off the seat because it's so slippery. A table which is on castors for ease of movement around the room and designed to be raised or lowered as desired, and intended to be used across the bed so the patient can eat from it, write and keep things  is another piece of furniture in the room. This over-bed table is annoying because the moment you need to move it, it won't move particularly easily, and because the room is so small it seems to take up a great deal of space.  This table can be raised or lowered. Another standard item in the room is a water jug, complete with lid (which is so annoying because it only rests on the top of the jug and isn't hinged, which sense would say was a better design feature.   Whenever you need to pour water from this jug, the lid won't lift off properly. A good example of a bad product design. No doubt they have separate lids for ease of washing, but not much else.) The whole room isn't furnished to allow much of a patients' personal belongings to be stored. There's a weird bedside cabinet which has some odd doors in it, and just about enough space inside to store a pair of shoes and some of the clothes a patient might have arrived on the ward in. It has a sort of lockable metal safe which I presume is for valuable items, but it's placed in such a way as to take up space which could be used better and doesn't allow for much to be placed on the unit, which would have been an ideal bedside unit. Another complete  design fail. Carol has to have a drip and theres a stand which is on a sort of five-castor base. It's a metal-constructed stand with a telescope central section with a sort of 'T'-shaped cross-piece with hooks on and the clear plastic bags of saline solution or medication are hung. There are clear plastic tubes running off this stand and into an electronic device with a digital read-out which is a pump which feeds the liquid into Carol's body via a series of cannulas in her arms. This pump is easily disturbed and when it is, it sets off a high-pitched alarm which can be more than a little bit annoying. Whenever Carol needs to use the toilet or have a wash in the nearby wet room (conveniently only a short distance from her room) she has to take the stand with her with all the tubes attached, which can take a bit of manoeuvring out of the room. It's quite a difficult job to avoid the bits of furniture, the end of the bed and the bedside table. More like a game of Tetris or one of those old fashioned games which had plastic shapes which had to be moved around a small frame to create an image of some sort, for example, a flag or famous scene of some sort.

In another corner of the room there is another standard N.H.S. item. It's a bin which has what is called 'silent closing.' You use your foot to open the lid, but you mustn't use your hand to close it (there's a notice stuck to the lid telling you his, in no uncertain terms, to use your hands. What happens if you do, if your caught doing such a terrible thing? Do you get your wrists slapped or something?) It's obviously to prevent you having to touch it, to reduce the spread of germs, but it's just so unnecessary to have this sort of notice plastered all over things like bins. The bed Carol has is another, presumably, standard item. It's on wheels, so it can be pushed around the ward as well as off to different departments around the hospital, such as taking patients to the operating theatres. It has sections which can be moved up and down by means of motors within the construction of the bed, the head, central section and foot-end, and the entire bed can be raised and lowered, which makes it easier for the patient to get in and out of bed and to make the staff's life easier.

Then, why does the place have to be so warm? I realise that there are those who might need to be kept warm, particularly if they're unwell or elderly. But in the small side-ward that Carol is on it's just like a furnace, so Carol has the window open. Then, the windows can only be opened no more than a couple of inches. No doubt to prevent anyone attempting suicide by jumping out or there being an accident and someone falling out. Taking health and safety to crazy levels. I've mentioned the food that patients have to eat. Of a very low quality. Soup that is in no way like any soup I've ever had anywhere and just generally inedible. It's not the staffs fault, it's because they're on such a tight budget.

There are miles of corridors at Milton Keynes Hospital. I realise that you have to have corridors, to link the various departments together, but the whole layout of the place is a real mess. It's only on two floors (although I think there are a few buildings on more than two floors.) If someone had designed the place in just a couple of multi-storey blocks, there would have been no need for so many corridors. Not only that, but surely it would have been a far better use of the land it's built on. No end of little courtyards in between the various buildings, some of which have been made into really pleasant gardens, but to be honest, this is just a waste of space.

Another thing you have to contend with in a hospital ward, and not only can I attest to this with the current situation but whenever I've had to spend time in one. is the amount of noise. Now, would you not expect a hospital ward to be quiet? Probably like a library, where you are expected to be quiet, so people aren't disturbed, to aid concentration? So, in a ward, the patients can get over whatever they are there for, to recuperate from an operation or whatever? But, no, the ward I was in, and the one Carol has been in, was extremely noisy. There are people talking at full volume, usually visitors, nurses and other professionals, being noisy, pushing beds around, maintenance men hammering, sawing or whatever, and then all those alarms going off constantly. Carol had a machine next to her bed, a pump-thing, which was constantly making noises, a high-pitched alarm. What on earth is the point of an alarm, if no one takes any notice of it? A bit like car alarms which have a habit of going off in the street, sometimes outside our house. But no one seems to care, nobody responds to them. So what on earth is the point of them if nobody responds in any way?

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