15 July 2004

Some memories of Hospital The operation went very well and the girls recovered very fast and got very bored even faster.  I continue to be somewhat amazed at the lack of organisation in Hospitals, a few examples follow:   The welcome letter says to ring the ward before you leave home to check a bed is available,  the letter says you need to arrive at the ward by 7:30, but in fact they don’t staff the ward until about 7:30.  Not many people live that close to the hospital! When we arrived at the ward the notice above the WHITE phone said use the RED phone to request entry We arrived at 7:25, bearing in mind the fact that the letter said arrive by 7:30.  However the ward did not open until 7:30 The ward was only half full In the end they decided to close it and moved us downstairs into another ward The hospital have out-sourced the TV’s, Phones and Parking.  Most of my interactions with the staff revolved around resolving issues with TV’s, Phones and Parking, and also private medical insurance refunds. Probably ½ of all nurse and doctor time was spent gathering and/or checking previously gathered information, or in taking trivial observations that required no training to take, (just to interpret). Only two drink brands were available for the children, orange and blackcurrant cordial.  Do these people have kids!  Given the importance of getting the kids to drink plenty following operations,  a few of the more popular brands might have been a good idea.  Mine flatly refused to drink the brands available so I had to leave two poorly kids, an hour after their operation to get Ribena from the hospital shop.  Choice was similarly limited to 3 varieties of cereal and one flavour of Jam! Ear plugs were not provided, (I took some though - I have been to hospital too many times to forget the essentials) Headphones for the bed-side TV’s and Radios were not available in one ward at all, but were available for every bed on another.  Supply of head-phones was out-sourced!  Not surprisingly the noise level on the ward without headphones was intolerable unless you had a TV in front of your face all day with the volume up! 4:04:31 PM      comment [] Tonsillectomy and Open Source My youngest daughters, twins, and I have been in hospital for the last two days for their Tonsillectomy and I have taken the opportunity to re-read the Cathedral and the Bazaar, and to start reviewing my past experiences with Open Source with the model it describes.  I have also started to review its progress against Eric Raymond’s predictions and some of the challenges it faces.  As a result I now have an Open Source category in my blog and two daughters without Tonsils.    4:02:52 PM      comment []

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