to think that meals in hospital shouldn't be free?

[quimstrings]

It just seems a bit strange. You'd have to pay for it if you were at home. The cost of feeding hospital patients must be astronomical, and the food (in my quite extensive experience) is pretty crappy. Cheap, badly cooked, and in many cases unsuitable for specific dietry requirements.

Wouldn't most people be happy to pay for their meals, and in return expect to be served appealing, healthy food?

Obviously patients in for extended periods or those on benefits should be offered a free/heavily subsidised option.

It would require some investment to completely change the system - but surely it would save millions in the long-run?

What do you think?

in my defence it is utterly horrific, demoralising, inhuman, etc etc that there is simply not the staff available to feed patients who need it.

Try going home at the end a shift (with no break at all) day after day after day, knowing you haven't been able to give care to people who need it.

That's why I suggested families could be 'allowed' to visit at meal times in order to help. The reality is that if they don't or can't their relative is quite likely to remain unfed or hurried.

I have never eaten hosp food when ill always had something brought in, i only ate hosp food when on work experience and temping on wards. In that hosp trust every ward went through a loaf a day on the nurse toast break at handover in the morning, uneaten food was regularly eaten by staff.

However i dont think food would save the budgets that much. My neighbour is sister on a cardiac ward. They arent fitting any more pacemakers this financial year as they have fitted 'too many' and overspent, so she is haviong the same patients bouncing in and out of her ward from care homes. But the silliest bit is that 3 night stay in a cardiac is more than a pacemaker op in cost to NHS.

My experience is very different to yours 3breasts - must be different trusts...

Still not sure why you think/thought that charging people for their meals would help the fact that your trust isn't deploying it's staff effectively.

The NHS doesn't work. Never has, never will. It's a massive bottomless pit. the staff aren't happy. the patients aren't happy. It will end up with a two tier system where the wealthy will get decent care funded through insurance preminums. The non-wealthy will get less decent care funded through taxation.

Maybe we should just stop fighting to make it work and accept the inevitable.

We always used to eat left over food on breaks glad it wasn't a sackable offence.

I think the food in my local hospital is pretty edible, especially since they switched to the steamfresh/microvave option. Less dried out fish and chips . Plus they have nice salads, which won't look so sorry if you can't eat it immediately or are off in scbu looking after a baby etc.

It's odd in the children's ward though, parents aren't fed at all unless breastfeeding. Which I think is pretty crap.

We were only there for 2 days, and I was bf so got a hot meal. But if we were there for much longer and I was not bf, would have cost a fortune in meals for the parent staying with the child. Fair enough we could have done packed lunches from home, but still you would one way or another end up eating a lot of takeaways. Maybe it's different if your child is there for awhile, I don't know.

Paying for hospital meals would be pretty heinous. There are enough people especially elderly people who have to be coaxed to eat even a mouthfull that it would amount to wilfull neglect.

I have sat and fed purees/meals to enough reluctant patients to know that lots would not bother. Food is so important to the recovery of many people, would you charge for liquid feeds/build up drinks for those that could afford it?

I swear I despair at the totally fascist attitudes of a few on Mn, nevermind other forums I visit.

Makes me want to live in cosy commune on a far away island inhabited by lefty liberals who don't want to punish people for daring to be poor.

Plus on the ward I worked, every patient was fed. End of.

Lots of people are happy with NHS care, private isn't always better.

I knew a senior nurse, a damn good nurse who left for a private oncology ward. She came back despairing of the private system, regulations weren't followed, chemo meds were stored in a wicker basket , she did stay there and obviously changed dangerous practices. But still, IME private = shorter waiting times, not necessarily better care.

clem - there aren't the staff there to deploy. if you have 3 nurses and 2 NAs caring for 34 patients, 12 or so who need total care and feeding - doesn't take a mathmatician to work out someone is going to get cold food offered hours after meal time.

anyway that is beside the point. The point was that money needs to be saved somewhere non-life-threatening so if it's atoss up between closing an MRI scanner or ICU beds or childrens wards or cutting staff numbers or charging for meals I think it's a reasonable option.

You already pay for the hospital meals in your taxes unless you mean paying an awful lot more for it. If getting the same money more directly would affect the quality then I know a solution. Go to the people who currently control food quality and say this:

"You know the food you would serve if the patients were paying for it in cash? Well start serving that food tomorrow or find another job"

Easy.

3breastsin myshirt - speak for yourself but not thousands of other people, who are happy and glad of being alive and not taken the piss out of.

yes sometimes they get it wrong - but on a personel level I wouldn't be here and niether would any of my children or my ex if it wern't for the NHS.

My mothers treatment was wonderful and a friend who went private had nothing but shoddy treatment and was kept waiting for hours by the same consultant that my mother saw on time eevery time.

When she was on the ward offers of food for me and my father were constant - we never accepted and got food form home or tesco to eat, this kindness though is lovely and for some it was a godsned. They took care of me aswell.

If you really thing the NHS doesn't work - try china for health care and perhaps you may appreciate what you have here in the UK

Those aren't the choices though. Nutrition IS healthcare (it is worrying that as a healthcare professional you have never been taught this). Without food no patient will recover whatever fancy equipment you use on them.
You have your experience of an obviously failing hospital - that is not the picture for the whole NHS.
You only have to think back twenty years to find mixed wards were the norm, waiting times at A&E were 10 hours plus, nurses were even more underpaid then they are now, and treatment options were limited. The NHS is a huge, lumbering organisation, but it is one that I am very proud to be a part of.

Blimey 3 breast where on earth do you work, sounds horrific. I worked on a 30 bed medical ward where turnover was high, there were never less than 3 nurses and 3 hca's on a shift. There was obviously a variable amount of heavy care patients, but they all got fed in a timely fashion.

Can't imagine what it is like for you, I was always running about like a blue arsed fly as it was.

where have i said it isn't? where did i say it isn't important?
I mearly pointed out that the food served up by some hospitals is not of a nutritional standard required for health and healing.

I want to believe in the NHS where it is good it is bloody amazing but I still don't think it works. It is too big and too expensive to be paid for out of NI and taxation. People don't want taxes raisedd, people want good schools, roads that aren't potholed, social services to protect the vulnerable and free healthcare. Something has to give and it will.

Scrap nuclear weapons?
Raise tax for the very rich?
You are right - it is a question of priorities.

PS You said "and is food healthcare? would a vitamin pill not be the healthcare bit?"

I honestly don't think thay could scrap the NHS, people rightly love it and are proud of it. It fails in some instances but private healthcare does too.

The day they scrap the NHS is the day this country would mass protest (hopefully,anyway).

I do think the meals should be provided.
Don't forget how lucky we all are over here. Try getting ill in Spain - state hospitals expect a relative to stay with you to feed you and provide "nursing" eg washing, dressing, etc. Actual "nurses" only provide medical care. That was fun in hospital after a C-section with no family nearby and a business to run that dh had to go home for each day, I can tell you. Not.

So, count your blessings and think before you whinge.

grey areas between health/social type care. where does healthcare stop and other sorts take over? is it healthcare to provide a meal or just to provide adequate nutrients (which don't figure highly in most hospital food).

should the finance for providing food come out of the healthcare budget? or does it come under education? or is it just 'healthy' food that should come out of the NHS budget? so patients could get their salad or vegetables or brown bread free and have to pay top up fees for pudding?

Hmm, though I suspect not that you are wind up merchant, a balanced diet is just that - fruit and veg, carbohydrates (including sugar), fibre, protein and fat. Many of those who are ill have a higher calorific demand than those who are well, so actually puddings would be more beneficial than a salad. A patient with cystic fibrosis, for example, is advised to eat lots of sugar and other high calorie foods (with fortified foods free for them on prescription).
What is your role in the hospital, because you don't seem to know much about medical care?

I'm in charge.

Ah - admin...

no. so less of your sweepig assumptons. how you can decide i know nothing about medical care from a banter on an internet forum is quite frankly rather insulting.

Perhaps you should stop writing such ignorant things then. If you don't mean them why are you saying them? If you do mean them, then your medical knowledge is inadequate.
Either way, I find the idea that you might represent the medical profession also rather insulting. I wouldn't want the casual reader to assume that you were representative...

i'm missing something? where? because i didn't list the nutritional demands of every specific medical disorder? or because i disagreed with the tired sterotypical view that anyone working for the glorious NHS should not be allowed to question it's efficacy?
I'm just trying to keep a discussion focussed on the original proposal, which was the possibility of charging for hospital meals. you may disagree with that, you are allowed to, while i am allowed to wonder whether that might save some much needed money and how it maybe done. perhaps by allowing free elements and charging for extras.

but how many times are you going to charge for everything?

Do you not think that someone who has paid into the "system" for 45 years then doesn't want the rules to change and they have to start paying agian for all those things they paid for before?

Of course you are entitled to your views on the OP, just as I am entitled to be horrified that someone "in charge" doesn't understand that calorific food is essential for the ill and recovering, that dieticians are called in to meet the needs of patients with conditions that require specialist input, that not all patients have families, that not all patients are in hospital through their own choice, that food is healthcare and without it being provided many patients would simply die.
These are all statements you have made - they don't read like "banter".
Anyway - you have your view, I have mine, but I wanted to reassure the many out there with elderly relatives in hospital that there are healthcare workers caring for many of them with compassion and an understanding of the realities of their lives and their backgrounds.