discussion Health update.

[BarryW]

As many of you know I am in Kings College Hospital London having brought in due to losing the use of my body below the legs. A long story I won’t go into.

In short after assessment at my local A&E in Ashford I was taken by ambulance to Kings to have a tumour removed from my spine. The operation was done just over a week ago and went well. They are pretty certain that the origin of the tumour is my prostate.

After a week from surgery I am still in Kings and unable to walk. The recovery will be a long one and so far has been hampered by extremely bad pressure sores. These are my main source of pain and are proving extremely problematical to deal with. I have had some physio, working on core strength, but have still not been able to sit out of the bed.

Sensations are slowly returning to my legs but are still weak. The physios seem pleased with progress.

Oncology treatment has started with some injections and I am expecting radiotherapy and more to be done.

I have been accepted for repatriation to Ashford and I am awaiting a bed there. It will be a great relief to be nearer home where my family and friends are better able to visit. My whole world for a bit over a week has been four beds and occupants around me in the ward. No sight or sun or sky at all!!!

Staff here have been excellent while the specialist theatre team who did the operation are among the best in the country if not the world.

Just one to bothers me….

The food. OK, i am not here for the food and it feels wrong to moan about it. But if the hot food served here was provided to occupants of HM Prisons there would certainly be riots and prisoner care associations would be up in arms. One example, a jacket potato that has the consistency of soggy mashed potato with any nutrition expunged from it. Truly revolting. I am no nutrition expert but even I can see it does not meet basic standards. This just seems wrong to me. It is so basic to health and they just get it wrong. I am now living on salads, sandwiches and corn flakes. In fact I am eating much that I would not usually touch at home due to my type 2 diabetes….

Any other such experiences?

 

[Geoffers]

Hang tough Barry :thumb2:

Your recovery seems to be going well Probably doesn’t feel like it but take heart from the physio’s opinion that they are pleased with your progress which can only be a good sign.

Regarding hospital food you are absolutely correct it is generally very poor quality :disappointed2:

A few years ago my mother was in our local hospital for a small operation which she went private for rather than wait the several years to have it done on the NHS.
While there she was treated to a private menu of vey nicely cooked meals.
I don’t understand why they don’t offer a better option for all that could afford to pay for the improved food which would help subsidise and improve the quality for the people that couldn’t afford the upgraded option :thinking:

Geoff.

 

[BarryW]

Hang tough Barry :thumb2:

Your recovery seems to be going well Probably doesn’t feel like it but take heart from the physio’s opinion that they are pleased with your progress which can only be a good sign.

Regarding hospital food you are absolutely correct it is generally very poor quality :disappointed2:

A few years ago my mother was in our local hospital for a small operation which she went private for rather than wait the several years to have it done on the NHS.
While there she was treated to a private menu of vey nicely cooked meals.
I don’t understand why they don’t offer a better option for all that could afford to pay for the improved food which would help subsidise and improve the quality for the people that couldn’t afford the upgraded option :thinking:

Geoff.

A very good point.

 

[Allen Dewire]

Damn Barry,

So sorry to hear that it has gotten so bad for you. It's good to hear that you are making progress though...

I had bladder cancer back in 2011. The first thing they did was shove a Nikon up Mr. Happy to look inside my bladder. Yup, a huge tumor on the inside wall and other tests showed I had a large tumor on the entrance to my stomach. 2 ops for the price of one, but with two different teams. Urology and Internal Medicine. Over 7 hours on the op table and then to the intensive station. The first evening, I almost bled to death as the Internal team screwed something up, but corrected it without another op. The Urology team did an outstanding job and gave me a new bladder made out of about a meter of my intestines. The bladder tumor was a G3 cancerous type (the worst) and the other one over my stomach entrance was not cancerous...

A normal 3 week hospital stay turned into an almost 8 week hospital stay. The Internal team gave me the wrong meds and they killed my white blood cells to a point where I was put into isolation for 6 days. The food, was at first okay, but with each passing week, it was always a rotation of the same thing, day for day, week for week. Into the 5th week in the hospital, I couldn't even see it anymore. I just stopped eating altogether. After 5 days, the docs threatened to feed me intravenously. Funny thing was, in the evening of the 5th day, a friend came to visit and said he had something for me. He forgot it and went back to his car to get it. He came back with a Pizza. It was cold, but boy was it good!!! Other friends started bringing me food when they visited and I began to eat again. I'd skip the hospital breakfast as I couldn't stand the smell of the hospital coffee. I went to the coffee vending machine in the hall for a cuppa. For lunch, to the Kiosk or small restaurant by the lobby. Evenings, back to the Kiosk, as I knew the woman that worked there. She was closing up and gave me the warm/cold food that wasn't sold that evening, for free. I ate the hospital dinner meal 4 times, until I was released to go home. It took 6 years before I could eat sliced German brown bread without getting sick...

Sorry for the long blah-blah Barry, but I realize what you are going though, with a longer hospital stay. Sure ain't fun...

Please take care and keep us updated. Make progress, enjoy the pretty nurses........and keep your hands to yourself!!!

Gute Besserung
Allen

 

[Waspie]

Barry, I can't even begin to know what you're going through but as has been said, hang in there. All recovery is a slow progress, that I do know so take every day as it comes. Just concentrate on getting better. As for the food, I was told off for sneaking food into SWMBO. They said it didn't help with her recovery, SWMBO said otherwise!!
Doug

 

[Jim R]

Sounds as if things were bad but are now getting better. As Doug said recovery is often a slow process so just take it one day at a time.
As for the food. It's the same as school dinners. No thought, no care, poor quality and as cheap as possible. People like Jamie Oliver have shown things can be better. Recovery from illness must surely be helped by decent, nourishing food.
All the best Barry.

 

[Guest]

That sounds awful Barry, I wish you all the best mate and hope everything is better for you soon!

About hospital food, back in 2005 I was in a coma and rushed to hospital, woke up about a week later and oh my the food was dreadful, I even asked them jokingly if they could put me back in a coma lol! One good thing came of it though, when I left hospital a couple of weeks later, I'd lost some weight!

 

[Airborne01]

Hang tough Barry :thumb2:

Your recovery seems to be going well Probably doesn’t feel like it but take heart from the physio’s opinion that they are pleased with your progress which can only be a good sign.

Regarding hospital food you are absolutely correct it is generally very poor quality :disappointed2:

A few years ago my mother was in our local hospital for a small operation which she went private for rather than wait the several years to have it done on the NHS.
While there she was treated to a private menu of vey nicely cooked meals.
I don’t understand why they don’t offer a better option for all that could afford to pay for the improved food which would help subsidise and improve the quality for the people that couldn’t afford the upgraded option :thinking:

Geoff.

Profit for outsourced suppliers perhaps ... ?
Steve

 

[rickoshea52]

All the best for a speedy recovery and return to the bench Barry.

 

[Tim Marlow]

Sorry to hear of your woes Barry. Hope it gets better quickly for you.

As to the food, all soft services (catering, cleaning, logistics etc) in those sorts of establishments have been run by companies bidding for these tenders for many years. The companies that run these contracts have one aim. Gouge as much out of the company supplying the contract while delivering the minimum of service to still meet that contract. The catering facilities, for example, will be limited to heat and serve stations, with very few poorly paid trained staff, to run them. The days of a proper kitchen, staffed by trained employees, preparing food from scratch, disappeared about forty years ago in the drive for “efficiency and saving”.

My old local hospital had a major development that cost many millions. The development included a large and very well equipped laundry. This facility is run by a soft services company (Sodexo I think). That laundry had surplus capacity so looked for other contracts. It now does the majority of the laundry for all the hotels and care homes in the area. It doesn’t do the laundry for the hospital though…..it was too expensive, so the hospital outsourced the contract to another company about fifty miles away.

 

[Andy T]

I can't even begin to find the right words Barry but I wish you all the best for as full and speedy a recovery as possible.

 

[A_J_Rimmer]

Glad to hear things are all moving in the right direction Barry - Best wished for a speedy recovery.

 

[Nicko]

Hope things improve for you soon Barry and that the rations are a bit more palatable in Ashford...

Nick

 

[BarryW]

Sorry to hear of your woes Barry. Hope it gets better quickly for you.

As to the food, all soft services (catering, cleaning, logistics etc) in those sorts of establishments have been run by companies bidding for these tenders for many years. The companies that run these contracts have one aim. Gouge as much out of the company supplying the contract while delivering the minimum of service to still meet that contract. The catering facilities, for example, will be limited to heat and serve stations, with very few poorly paid trained staff, to run them. The days of a proper kitchen, staffed by trained employees, preparing food from scratch, disappeared about forty years ago in the drive for “efficiency and saving”.

My old local hospital had a major development that cost many millions. The development included a large and very well equipped laundry. This facility is run by a soft services company (Sodexo I think). That laundry had surplus capacity so looked for other contracts. It now does the majority of the laundry for all the hotels and care homes in the area. It doesn’t do the laundry for the hospital though…..it was too expensive, so the hospital outsourced the contract to another company about fifty miles away.

Actually I have extensive experience in the contracting out of services going back to the early days in the 80’s when I was an elected councillor and, more latterly as part of school governance.

It is not as black as you suggest. There are good contracts and bad contracts, the bad contracts are the fault of the client side not the contractor. A contractor will naturally try to get away with things but if the contract is drawn well they must meet a required service level or get penalised. Good contract supervision is the key to good services. In my schools we now have an excellent catering contractor to which they are held to a decent standard. There is no reason why the NHS should not do the same.

 

[Airborne01]

Actually I have extensive experience in the contracting out of services going back to the early days in the 80’s when I was an elected councillor and, more latterly as part of school governance.

It is not as black as you suggest. There are good contracts and bad contracts, the bad contracts are the fault of the client side not the contractor. A contractor will naturally try to get away with things but if the contract is drawn well they must meet a required service level or get penalised. Good contract supervision is the key to good services. In my schools we now have an excellent catering contractor to which they are held to a decent standard. There is no reason why the NHS should not do the same.

Apart from the fact there are too many levels of management with a corresponding lack of responsibility/culpability perhaps ... :thinking:
Steve

 

[BarryW]

Apart from the fact there are too many levels of management with a corresponding lack of responsibility/culpability perhaps ... :thinking:
Steve

I agree about the excessive management and a lack of willingness to take responsibility, but that is a different issue to the contracting out of services in general.

 

[Airborne01]

I agree about the excessive management and a lack of willingness to take responsibility, but that is a different issue to the contracting out of services in general.

I agree about the excessive management and a lack of willingness to take responsibility, but that is a different issue to the contracting out of services in general.

Essentially yes Barry
Steve

 

[Tim Marlow]

Apart from the fact there are too many levels of management with a corresponding lack of responsibility/culpability perhaps ... :thinking:
Steve

Exactly the opposite in my experience Steve. All the middle managers with this sort of responsibility have been sacrificed on the altar of “cost saving” over the years. Responsibility has either been pushed up to those who only look at the balance sheet, or down to those that are so overworked they cannot do the task justice. In public service the idea of too many levels of management is actually a myth.

 

[Tim Marlow]

Actually I have extensive experience in the contracting out of services going back to the early days in the 80’s when I was an elected councillor and, more latterly as part of school governance.

It is not as black as you suggest. There are good contracts and bad contracts, the bad contracts are the fault of the client side not the contractor. A contractor will naturally try to get away with things but if the contract is drawn well they must meet a required service level or get penalised. Good contract supervision is the key to good services. In my schools we now have an excellent catering contractor to which they are held to a decent standard. There is no reason why the NHS should not do the same.

I’ve had to deal with most of the “big players” in these fields in my career Barry, most of it spent under the auspices of the NHS, and my experience is diametrically opposite to yours. Whoever came up with the idea of “framework partners”, for example, should be taken out and shot. Because of decisions taken at government board level we were only allowed to deal with certain companies. For example, recruitment had to be carried out through about a dozen named agencies. None of them were local to us, and all were geared to provide doctors and nurses. I needed technicians so got absolutely no joy from them. When I started I was allowed to post my own adverts in local papers and could easily get sixty applicants for our roles. By the time I left we were using this partner system and I was lucky to get any applicants at all. We didn’t need to put anything through HR though, so it was much more efficient…..not!

 

[Tim Marlow]

I agree about the excessive management and a lack of willingness to take responsibility, but that is a different issue to the contracting out of services in general.

Don’t ever remember working with an NHS employed manager that wouldn’t take responsibility for their role Barry. Worked (or tried to) with dozens from the private sector though! Most contract staff (especially engineering and maintenance) seemed to work from Monday to Thursday mid afternoon, with long breakfast and lunch breaks. The personnel changed so regularly there was no continuity of service at all. My experience of contract supplied staff was unremittingly dire to be absolutely honest.