Badly designed hospitals

[bobalinga]

C had a monstrous status seizure at 2am last Tuesday so was blue-lighted off to the Children's Hospital. They have a new wing, just built. We used to have to go to Southmead hozzie which was old and tired but now its Bristol Children's hospital.
Well, I dunno who designed the new bit but they aren't in a wheelchair! There are 5 sets of heavy double doors between the entrance to the hozzie and arriving on the ward. Each set is heavy to open and doesn't have a button for wheelchair users. Buggy pushers struiggle too. There are various courtyard gardens for patients......down steps Arrgh!!!! Inside the new shiny ward (and I must say, each room has ensuite facilities and a parents bed) the reception desk is at normal people height so you can see there and not be spotted (us wheelchair users are at butt height). The parents tea/coffee room is the size of a cupboard and I'd never get my powerchair in there (maybe disabled people don't have kids?). There's no hoist if a disabled parent needs to stay overnight.
For disabeld children.......no bath. The showers in the ensuite are able bodied showers. There's no toys in the playroom that DD could play with (she is quadraplegic and requires switch activated toys) (yes, we are a two wheelchair family).

I wont go into the lack of TV's or the terrible food in the canteen cos thats standard but you'd think a brand new ward wouldbe accessible for the disabled. I bet they don't have braille books or a deafblind manual interpreter eaither.
Will be calling in to see the Cheif Executive next time I'm down there and drooling on him till he does something about it.

[Saturn74]

I think a letter to the CE is definitely in order - what a nightmare!
The NHS probably went with the cheapest design quote, and no doubt the designer could have come up with a fab tree house or gazebo, but no-one thought to ask if they had any experience of hospital design!
How is your DD today?

[bobalinga]

She's ok. 3 days in hozzie cos they OD'ed her on IV lorazepam. She is temnsing a bit now and then but the doc thinks that isn't seizure activity but muscle spasms from her CP. Doesn't stop me fretting that she's starting some horrid epilepstic syndrome like Lennox-Gastaut. She had Infantile spasms as a baby but came through it intellectually intact. Only a handful of status seizures and a couple of partial complex's in the last 3 years.
I think she twitched for a few days after her last status.

[Saturn74]

It must be a constant worry.
Have you managed to get any rest?

[Josie3]

That's outrageous - and i had thought illegal!! I thought all new buildings had to be accessible to all? You'd think a hospital would be the one place you can go?!

[tomkat]

I hope your dd's OK. Our new "superhospital" (and I use that term loosely, lol!) has got one of those horrible big automatic revolving doors at the front, and no other obvious way to get in.

It's a sight to behold, people in wheelchairs, the elderly, and parents with buggies all trying to squeeze through until someone gets too close to the door and it grinds to a halt...