The best of care
More about my adventure to the Bradford Royal Infirmary…
After my leg operation, I spent the day (and following night) in the hospital High Dependency Unit. This was a precautionary measure due to my sleep apnoea condition- there is a slight risk when given a general anaesthetic which can be managed better there than on a regular ward.
The BRI HDU beds are actually contained within the intensive care unit and all beds can be used as intensive care if necessary. From memory, there were twelve beds in the ward, two of which were isolation ones for infectious conditions.
Each bed station was very well equipped, with most of the equipment built into an inverse U shaped structure that the bed nestled into. The Frame was fixed to the ceiling and also had fluorescent uplighters for additional lighting. Intensive care is intended for critical but survivable conditions which may well involve the patient being unconscious or heavily sedated. Therefore provision for assisted breathing is embedded along with vital signs monitoring and measured medication dispensing in the event of organ failure. Each station had its own sink for staff use and enough room to get behind the bed.
Whilst there were nurse calls and a light switch, Intensive Care isn’t really geared up for patients, who are mostly seriously ill and beyond caring. No television, radio, telephone or headset. The beds did have electric controls for adjusting posture though, which I could reach easily (there were duplicate controls).
Patient care is one nurse to two patients in HDU, and 1:1 for ICU. I was mildly amused to find a nurse spending much of the time sat at a school-type desk, recording my vital signs.
I was fairly coherent most of the time, but kept drifting off to sleep, what my Nurse called “Power Naps as I still had a lot of morphine & painkillers in me as well as residual anaesthetic. I found out that most of the staff were from the Philippines and that there was a bit of an ex-pat community of Filipinos and Filipinas in Bradford. They earned £10 an hour via their agencies and one or two of them were clubbing together to buy property rather than renting.
Many of them had worked in the Middle East/Far East before and they were amazingly good at their jobs (A trait I also found in the Middle East, where the Filipinos I worked with were very competent technicians).. They were also fascinated that I had looked after the phone system at Dhahran Hospital, although a lot longer ago than when some of them had been in Sauidi Arabia.
I queried what they did with all of the paperwork they were generating - basically it just got stuck into my file and may or may not get looked at, depending on how I got on.
One Nurse contrasted her work in Singapore- the ICU where she worked there was all integrated and tracked on computer, including trends analysis and diagnosis. Also samples could be sent to the lab via a rapid transit mechanism (presumably pneumatic tubes or similar) and rapid testing would get the results into the data stream in double quick time. She lamented however that it was much harder work because the patient:nurse ratio was 3:1 as the staff were relieved of much of the mundane tasks.
The ICU had a much better breakfast than the regular wards, I asked for Porridge & toast and got it, made to order by the staff. The monitoring equipment was very sensitive though, if I turned over, coughed or even farted, the gear would chime briefly.
I had a very pleasant 24 hours in the ward as it was surprisingly empty that day & the staff were very chatty, even the round doctors. However, a couple of critical patients started arriving as I was waiting to go back to the ward. I was a novelty there of course and needed little care other than pastoral.
