Hospital food and cleanliness

Visited Winchester Hospital today. The visit was prompted by a flurry of letters complaining about a number of aspects of their service. To be fair the hospital has been without a Chief Exec and a Trust Chair for some considerable time so this cannot have been helpful. Also to be fair, some of the problems have been acknowledged and are actively being dealt with.

Actually the food was really good (although I would like to have eaten it served up from a hospital catering trolly to get the full effect) and I am told there are regular patient surveys. They appear to be trying hard on the cleanliness front as well although a visit such as mine can only ever provide a snapshot of a particular selection of places at a particular time.

There is one thing that really bugs me about British Hospitals though - Why does no one ever think about storage? Every hospital I visit appears to be littered with patient trolleys, computer terminals on wheels, drug trolleys and various types of medical equipment. Have the architects who design them never heard of cupboards and store rooms?

There were also lots of plans for improvement - smaller wards will make a big difference to patients, so hopefully things are looking up.