Charge Nurse

This new hospital is an amazing place.  Nearly brand new.  So sophisticated and costly that it has decimated the rest of health care provision in the county.  Six months after opening, it bears the scuffs and scrapes of trolleys and wheelchairs and has started to look tatty.  Through the cell windows, you can see the hospital it replaced being bulldozed.

In a sign of the political climate, the emphasis of the new place is steadfastly on efficiency not service.  The accountants that designed and run it have gone to bizarre lengths to raise income. There is a shopping mall.  Bizarrely, next to the newsagent-cum-florist, there’s a jewellers.  Now call me an old traditionalist but when I go to hospital, I’m not usually looking for sterling silver earrings.  Or, for that matter, porcelain figurines of Yorkshire Terriers.  Next door, I can buy clothes.  Not replacement underwear or something to sleep in, mind you.  No, little cocktail dresses and sparkly wraps.  Am I missing something?  What kind of visitor thinks to pick up a Little Black Dress after seeing Auntie Marjorie recovering from an operation on her varicose veins?  There’s a shoe shop which doesn’t sell slippers.

And for those of us not inclined to gratuitous shopping, they’ve implemented a fiendishly simple parking charge that claims ‘free’ parking but requires almost everyone to pay a king’s ransom to rescue their car.  It’s a brilliant example of misdirection.  Free for the first twenty minutes; they neglect to mention that it takes more than thirty minutes to get to any ward and back again. Between twenty minutes and two hours it costs two pounds.  Not an astronomical sum, I grant you but an impressive leap nonetheless.  It means that if you’re anything less than an Olympic Silver Medallist, you’d better have some money on you. And here’s the really clever bit: visiting hours are restricted to two hour sessions so if you want to spend the full time with your poorly Loved One, the chances are you’ll go over time.  Just to make sure, the Authorities have supplied a single ticket machine to service five hundred spaces and the inevitable Kicking Out Time rush.  Over two hours and it’ll cost you four pounds.  After the quarter of an hour walk from the ward, a thirty minute queue at the machine, it took us another fifty-seven minutes to reach the exit barrier tonight, by which time our ticket was invalid anyway. 

We drove out over the pavement.

Comments

[Mrs RW]

Wow, I want to work there! The hospital where I work doesn't sell little black dresses! What if a rich doctor (hah!) wants to take me out when RW's not looking? I could use a place to buy a little "cheating on your husband" outfit. At least we have free (really free) parking AND we have valet parking, too. Sounds like the National Health Service is trying to make up the shortfall.