NHS, Bad? Think Again!

 I was unfortunate enough to come across a hospital worse than any hospital in London to date. What is more surprising is that the hospital in Italy, Milan, a fairly sophisticated country. 

   The hospital in situated in Lodi, situated in the outskirts of Milan. Appearances can be deceptive, and it certainly is in this case. It is a large building, in the process of being refurbished, so that would mean new wards, waiting rooms, new floors, toilets and so forth. Everything looked new and fresh but in truth the sight of a toilet was a rare thing, finding a clean seat was a gift from God.   

There is an endless list of negative features that I could point out, but I decided to shorten them. One of the first words that might come to mind with a hospital is hygiene. It is an essential necessity, but not in Ospedale Maggiore (hospital’s name in Lodi).   

 The toilets are dotted around the hospital and there should be a toilet in every floor. However, in this case one has to travel across the hospital to find a decent restroom. With only one cubical, a sink that has no soap to clean your hands and lack of toilet paper which seems to have gone missing. 

In addition a disconcerting concern arose when visiting a patient in ICU, in finding that NO antiseptics were available. When asking the nurses for some, she assured us they were not needed! Having been to the hospital consecutively for days, we found no improvement in hygene. The lack of basic hygene in a hospital that treats thousands of patients throughout the year makes us re-examine our hospitals in a different light.

 Let’s move onto another point, the A&E area. It is just larger then a classroom with one receptionist and three small wards for the seriously injured. This tiny room struggles to fit 30 people, and they have ‘codes’ which determine the seriousness of the injury.

    Code red was urgent injury, while white was minor. There was a lady in her mid-50s that had a white code with pain on her left leg, she waited from 4pm. We later found out that she waited more than 5 hours before she left.  

 This might be understandable with a minor injury, the previous day (Friday) an elder women was branded code red, she waited 4 hours before getting to see a doctor. She was brought in by the ambulance after complaining of bloated stomach, she had ulcer-like balls in her intestine that needed urgent removal.  

  As I said before there are other factors such as the nurses, who rarely interact with patients making them feel alienated, that degrades the hospital. Although the hospital appears fresh, modern, with ‘dedicated’ staff, in reality it is a wreck covered up.  

In my opinion there should be no difference between one hospital to another. Hospitals are goverment funded and should recieve the same funding throughout the country. It should make no difference whether one hospital is in a better area than the other. What surprised me more than the conditions of the hospital was the passivity of both the patients and families. They seemed to accept these conditions on the premis that there was nothing to be done about it.    I may have come across the only bad hospital in Milan or Italy but this hospital potentially treats hundreds of thousands of patients. A risk too many in my opinion.