Dear NHS
Thank you for my lovely stay in hospital. It really was all those little extra touches that made it so memorable.
I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to walk half the length of the hospital in nothing but a rather fetching gown and surgical stockings, in order to get to the operating theatre.
I did enjoy the humour of being able to watch the tobacco addicts wheeling their drips out of the front door to the roadside in order to get round your no-smoking policy.
I though the installation of loudly ticking clocks and toilet doors that couldn’t help but wake the whole ward were a god send to aid the use of insomnia as a recovery technique. All you needed was a cuckoo clock so that I knew exactly which hour it was that I was still awake.
And as for positioning me opposite someone who had had a procedure which left them farting loudly in their sleep throughout the night, well I just can’t thank you enough.
Do you think it might be worth including patients in your project planning meetings so that decisions can be made which actually meet their needs? Perhaps it should be compulsory for every project team and administrator to sleep on the ward for at least a week before being allowed anywhere near making decisions that affect the day to day care of patients. It’s amazing how many little ideas they might come up with for improvements.
Yours sincerely
A tired patient.
