General Chat

yet another one.......

I have to declare that the hospital where I am admitted most times does serve really good food. They offer highly spiced meals which you do need teeth to eat. I cannot abide food which you can suck through your teeth :-0

My only complaint is the breakfast toast which bears a remarkable resemblance to cardboard.

Each ward has it's own kitchen and patient's family are encouraged to bring in whatever the patient fancies. This even more so on colorectal where older patients may struggle with unfamiliar food choices but it's important for them to begin to eat after surgery.

A budget of £3 per day per patient isn't enough. This is supposed to cover: breakfast with beverage, mid morning drink, lunch with beverage, mid afternoon drink and biscuits, evening meal and beverage, late drink and sandwich. All with built in allowance for wastage.

I did order a la carte in one hospital and it was inedible :-( :-(

I would happily pay a daily amount towards catering, after all I am saving money by eating in hospital and not at home.

Would you pay?

Sue

Yes, I'd pay but only if it could in some way be paid directly to the hospital kitchen budget (don't know how this could work). As you say, we would have to pay for our food at home anyway. The only trouble would be that if the patients started paying then the government would undoubtedly think they could cut the budget to the hospitals.

I must say that I have been an in patient many times locally (last time in March) and the food is perfectly acceptable.

I don't think we need another "celebrity" chef getting involved.

Kath. x

Do you think that the hospital authorities would think such a scheme would be difficult to introduce because, perhaps, it would mean more admin staff would need to be employed?

Someone on here may know, but there was a time when, if you had a long hospital stay and you were a pensioner, your pension was used to offset hospital 'bed and board' (for want of a better description). Does that still apply?

JoyLouise

Found online............

Going into hospital
Your State Pension continues to be paid however long you are in
hospital. If you also receive a benefit such as Attendance Allowance,
payment of which may be combined with your State Pension, this may
be affected by a hospital stay.


I don't have recent experience of hospital food, but have in the past seen great variances in quality in different hospitals.

I'd be happy to pay, if the admin to collect payments did not outweigh the benefit to the hospital.

Personally I wouldn't pay as that way you start a 2 tier system.
That is NOT what the NHS is about.

I would however be prepared to pay more in taxes if I thought the money would be used appropriately and not go to line some dimwitted politicians pocket.

I recently had a relative in a hospital in Wales where they didn't have a clue what a dairy free diet was.It was left to her spouse to take food for her everyday.

Appropriate good food is part of the healing process and it's not surprising that people,especially the elderly rapidly go downhill!

I still don't get why nourishing food cannot be provided, cooked on the premises by people who understand nutrition. It's not rocket science.
Rant over ;-)

Grief Von shocked at your comment re the dairy free requirement. I have always been asked about dietary requirements when admitted. Then the dietician visits to explain what the codes are on menus to help patients choose the appropriate meals.

I’m in Wales and have been fortunate not to have experienced that level of lack of knowledge.

I hope the hospital wasn’t in the. Valleys :-0

Last time I was in hospital and 'knocked out' - about 15 years ago, I had a knee operation.
When I came round I had to do the 'usual' and eat before I was released.
They offered me a McDonald's sandwich :-|
I don't go to McDonalds out of principal. I certainly didn't want their sandwich - but, after 'negotiating' with the sympathetic nurse, I had to eat at least half of it, as I didn't want to 'bed block' either! :-S

:-D :-D at Maggie

I think, perhaps, that the fact I could 'argue my case' was a factor in my being allowed home (alone)!
So maybe I shouldn't totally 'diss' McDonalds in this case!
But the sandwich was foul.

Living in another country for so many years, I really don't know about food in UK hospitals, other than what I read online.

However .......... Von's experience re no knowledge of dairy-free meals is not restricted to Welsh hospitals!!!

I was last in hospital here in 2011, for a planned 1 night after an operation. The nurses asked me in late afternoon about food for breakfast ........ I said it had to be dairy-free.

So what did I get??

Buttered toast and tea with milk in it.

The nurses on duty were horrified, and tried to get me something else from the kitchen, but resorted to raiding their own ward supply to give me 1 slice of dry toast.

Fortunately I was released, as planned, in the late morning, and OH gave me food when we got home!

We do seem to still have kitchens in our hospitals where meals are produced on-site, rather than the off-site suppliers that I've read about in English newspapers.


On the funny side, some of you may know that we love to take the Canadian trains, especially The Canada from Vancouver to Toronto, a 4 day trip. The meals are usually superb, equal to a 4 star restaurant. However, the menu for dinner on our 3rd day from Toronto last January had only 1 option that I could eat .............. Salisbury Steak.

The one and only time that I had ever had Salisbury Steak was back in 1977 when I had to go into hospital for an operation, and it was the first meal that I was served.

It was awful!!!

It basically was ground beef (mince) mixed with some tomato, cooked in the oven and covered with gravy, and served with a slice of bread.

You can imagine what I thought looking at it on the menu in January 2019 :-P

The server persuaded me to try it ..........................

it was delicious!!

Night and day from that hospital food!

The staff at the hospital five minutes away from us can be both good and bad when it comes to dietary requirements. At breakfast times, the ward staff use the ward's kitchen to make toast for their ward patients.

One family member who has Coeliac Disease fared well in the first ward he was in as all of the staff were au fait with dietary requirements. Just before his release he was moved to a Day Ward and the next morning one member of staff brought toast around for everyone. Luckily he had the presence of mind to ask whether it was gluten-free. He explained why. The response was that surely it won't hurt this once? She tried to persuade him for a few minutes. He tried to tell her it was not a fad or a way to keep weight down and that if he ate it he would be quite violently sick and more!

Some staff are wonderful but others 'let the side down' completely.

Eating food should be regarded as a pleasurable necessity.

No Sue it was sunny Pembrokeshire. Even the chef didn't seem to understand :-0

Von phew ?? I lived in West Wales for 25 years and a Pembs hospital was where the butcher mutilated my hip :-|

Fortunately I have not had the experience of hospital food. Except when I was kept overnight after an op that was supposed to be day surgery, was late and they thought I should stay overnight. Gloucester, about 10 years ago. Having not had any food all day (because the op was late, general op), when I cam round and was back in bed I was hungry, It took the nurse quite a while to source a cheese sandwich for me. I had to actually ask for something for breakfast as I was not to be released until the surgeon had seen me. I eventually got a cup of tea and a slice of toast.

JoyLouise I am glad that you queried that about pensions as I thought they still kept part if you were in a while. thanks Gwyn for sorting that out.

I can see where Von is coming from re a two tiered service. I can't see how the kitchens could operate with some patients paying and some not.

Years ago my BIL went for a routine blood pressure test and the doctor packed him straight off to hospital, no explanations. He arrived too late for the evening meal and didn't get any food, maybe a cup of something. In the middle of the night he got up, probably a bit dis-orientated, and promptly passed out. My sister got a phone call at about 3am to say his condition had 'deteriorated'. At this point we didn't even know what was wrong with him, other than that the poor bloke was probably starving! Great lesson in how to make a worrying situation worse :-(

I noticed during my lengthy stay in Newcastle's RVI (ward 23)

that a lot of food was wasted because patients didn't want it

and the nursing staff weren't allowed to eat it. What a waste. :-(

David, I was not a nurse but I have to ask whether the nursing staff really wanted to eat it? The food must have been put on the sick one's table where it would have stood for a while. Also, some of the meals were possibly geared to a person's dietary requirements so may not have been palatable to others.

Let us contemplate all the many good things we take for granted & for which we often show little appreciation.

I'll scone that, Dermot.

The NHS