Hospital parking - good news? bad news? impossible task?

One of our local hospitals is now only allowing visitors in the evening because of parking problems. It has certainly made parking for outpatients much easier.

www.signal1.co.uk/news/local/nhs-campaigners-head-to-stafford-hospital-camp/

I have not heard anything about this on the news; was alerted by a nearby resident.
I am surprised the hospital authorities are not charging them for parking .....

It's also a sad fact, rose, that many wards do not tell carers that they are allowed to stay and feed their very sick relatives. I found out online.

dj it is a sad fact but true that carers may need to be there to help look after and feed their sick relatives in some hospitals, make sure they have clean water and are kept clean and decently covered.
I expect many of us have a story about a friend or relative who needed the help of family to care for them in hospital. I know I have.

To balance this, there are many wonderful nurses and hc assistants who do a sterling job and I have been looked after by some of them.

When my husband was last in hospital, I used to go in the morning and stay and feed him because I knew nobody else would. That was rather dangerous for a diabetic.
One day I had to go somewhere else, and when I went in the afternoon and looked at his notes, I was told he had eaten his cottage pie. He was vegetarian.
I quite often had to send back the food he was given as they had kindly poured meat gravy all over his vegetarian food. Despite the fact that, because of his swallowing difficulties he was not supposed to mix solid and liquid foods.

Sometimes it's better for family to stay longer. By the way, all wards should have a policy about carers being able to help feed those they care for.

When I was last in hospital, a man opposite had lots of visitors overnight. I was not that observant as I was having hallucinations at the time. He turned into a worm and flew off in a rocket that the nurses had turned his bed into. I found out the next day he had died.

Seeing that snotty-nosed toddler may be the dying wish of some relative who loves them dearly.

What annoys me is people who park in hospital car parks in Wales (because they are free) then go off and do their shopping, or even off on the bus for the whole day.

I am totally against parking charges for anyone who is a patient at any hospital (the sick have enough to worry about without that added burden).
Surely it is easy enough for the car park attendant to ask for a look at the appointment letter/card while the patient and anyone with them is waiting in the inevitable half hour queue to park?

Close family or friends should be able to park either free or for a nominal charge during visiting hours. Visiting hours should be strictly adhered to unless the patient is a child or is dying.

JessM, I think you raise an interesting point, when my father was in hospital, which he was for the last 10 weeks of his life my sister and I would visit him daily and stay about an hour then go, but we often saw other people with members of their family sitting there, hour after hour, and I used to wonder whether it was as much a strain on the visitors as the visited.

You read on Gransnet as well as elsewhere of people measuring their devotion to somebody dear to them in terms of how long and how often they visited them in hospital or a care home and I have sometimes wondered whether it is really efficacious for either.

When the hospital rang us to tell us that my father's death was imminent my sister and I went straight to the hospital to spend his last hours with him, but when, after 5 hours, we took a short break for coffee and a sandwich, he had died by our return - and the hospital staff told us this was not uncommon.

When I'm in hospital I'm lucky if I get visitors and I really appreciate them.

I can't speak for those who bring snotty-nosed children, because when I was in hospital last year no children were allowed to visit, and the same applied when an elderly relative was hospitalised this year.

It did seem, however, that some patients had an endless supply of visitors who simply worked a relay system when only two visitors were allowed. I doubt whether they all came in the same car...

What? Nobody sticking up for the right for all relatives and acquaintances to gather that the bedsides of the sick and dying? Bringing with them screaming toddlers with snotty noses?

OK here's a thought. Visitors to hospitals are a huge problem. Here's my argument:

Most people who are in hospital these days are there because they are really ill. Yet many of them get more visitors in a day than they get in a week at home. Hospital visiting is a cultural tradition - people feel they should go. And go they do, in droves.
When my MIL had her first hip replacement she had 3 priests and about 10 other people visit her the day after the operation. When my son was in a shared room with a man who was dying (of cancer, rather suddenly), dozens of people turned up, which was pretty tough on his wife and daughter.
Hospitals only nod to the idea that there should be only 2 visitors per bed. Sometimes there is a family reunion going on, which is tough on other patients nearby.
Yet nearly all these visitors expect a convenient parking space! Maybe if hospitals were strict about the no more than 2 per bed, and no more than 2 per visiting time, the pressure on parking spaces would be greatly reduced.

At hour hospital cancer patients going in for treatments can get their car park tickets cancelled at reception. When DH spent a month in OXford having a stem cell transplant they gave me a free pass to the staff car park.
When our SiL took DD to hospital to have GS1 late at night he just left a note on the car saying Wife in Labour and sorted it out later.

Having had several trips to A and E following ambulances, often in the middle of the night, I do wish there was there was some provision for token or free parking at the local A and E dept. It is quite traumatic enough to have to do this, without ferreting around for loose change or checking for credit cards and a purse before you roar off after the ambulance with your loved one in.

not

I have attended four hospitals in Scotland this year where parking was free and fortunately, non of the ones mentioned in the BBC link were not hospitals I had appointments with.

I fear there are deep cuts into the budget of Welsh hospitals in the pipeline rosequartz even though we are not being sold off piecemeal or told how to manage parking!

Re your post Ana, unfortunately waiting lists for certain procedures in Wales are much longer than those in England.

I must say that so far (fingers and toes crossed) I have received very good treatment.

Read the bloody BBC link!
It's only hospitals in England that have been told to cut the costs.

Read my post of 16.41. And why on earth is the English concern more imortant?

Whatever, durj.

The link in the OP was about English hospitals. That's why the English concern is more important.

I did point out that most of Welsh and Scottish hospitals don't charge for parking, rosequartz earlier today, but as usual the English concern seems to be more important!

For all the DM bashers on GN (I think one said it should be flushed down the nearest drain -terrible advice, that would block up the system), this is as a result of a concerted DM campaign.

I have no axe to grind, read more than one newspaper for, I hope, a balanced view, and in Wales we do not pay anyway. Just setting the record straight.

Eloethan The provision of bedside telephones and televisions is also run by private companies. Hospitals signed long-term contracts with penalty clauses before the explosion in the use of mobiles which threw the business plan and private company's projected profits out of the window. Even if some hospitals still ban the use of mobile phones inside the hospital, plenty of ambulant patients use them outside and so don't pay for the bedside phones which charge for incoming as well as outgoing calls.

I would have thought that some sort of type of "blue badge" system could be operated. Perhaps by the department that the patient is attending if thought suitable. There could be a limiting date on it when the patient is expected to complete their treatment.