My family has recently suffered a very upsetting experience,
my daughter's uncle has died; not my own brother, her mother's brother. He was
seventy-five years old and has been in very poor health for several years, but
he was definitely one of the closest members of my extended family. I reported
on this during the last two episodes of The Gas Spanner, see:
https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-gas-spanner-programme-159.html
and:
https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-gas-spanner-programme-160.html.
We called an ambulance for him last Friday week and he was taken to the JRH
Emergency Department. From there he went to the Emergency Assessment Unit and was
put into a side room. I didn't say anything to the family at the time, but I
knew from my experience that at that point the doctors had little hope for his recovery. He was kept comfortable for four days and then he peacefully passed
away. That's all I wish to say about him right now, but I would like to comment
on what it was like to visit the
John
Radcliffe Hospital
for the first time in many years. It has totally and utterly changed, mostly
for the worst. The ED has been completely reorganized with the triage area
where the resuscitation room used to be and a new resus near the major side
doors. I don't know why this was done, but I do know that there's a cast iron
rule that anything in the NHS that's not broken always has to be fixed. The
place generally looks far more compact and crowded with less open space. The
waiting room is sealed off from the rest of the unit by heavy duty locked doors,
a system I noticed also during my recent visit to a
London
hospital, see:
https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/07/uch.html.
I assumed this was just local practice in the capital, but it obviously is
nationwide.
On my second visit to my daughter's uncle on the
Saturday I walked there and entered ED directly from the outside. It has something
strange surrounding the entrance ramp that I've not seen before. It looks to me
like a high security fence, but designed not to look like one, similarly to the
"lorry ramming of peace" barriers you see in major cities that are all
done up with flower pots and artwork. I got the feeling this fence is designed
to have barbed wire on the top of it if needed, but the Oxford University
Hospitals Trust (it's changed its name from Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust)
aren't going to unless it is "politically necessary". Despite that,
the new ED does have the atmosphere of a military camp. The Illustration above very
out-of-date. Inside there was a much denser security presence than there used
to be with a guard visible all the time. One of them recognized me and said
hello. He used to be a porter, but has since been promoted... if you can call
it that. On our first visit, the Friday afternoon, I went to the main hospital
entrance and was greeted by a civilian receptionist who was most unhelpful. She
was clearly doing her best, but seemed unable to locate the patient we asked
for. She made two phone calls and then wrote down a phone number on a scrap of
paper for us to call. This is absurd. The main duty of the receptionist,
whether desk porter or civilian, is to direct visitors to the part of the
hospital they are trying to find. This should be very simple; they are supposed
to have a database of all the patients' locations in front of them; and it used
to take just a few seconds to search and pinpoint the ward or department the
visitor is looking for. What on earth has gone wrong? Ironically the Trust has
spent over a million pounds revamping the entire entrance and main street area
so that it looks like some kind of designer shopping centre/hotel lobby/airport
lounge combination; yet at the same time its basic and necessary practical
aspects have fallen into total dysfunction. Do they think if they simply
shock-and-awe us enough with stained glass panels, polished beach screens and
stripy floor lino we will not notice how downright crappy the service is? My
ex-partner, my daughter's mother, is disabled and can only walk a few dozen
yards so I had to find a wheelchair for her. There were none at all in the
public pool, but luckily I then met a brother porter who recognized me and he
showed me their secret stash in Outpatients. I asked him where the lodge was
these days and he said: "There is no lodge"; that doesn't surprise
me, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/08/new-lodge.html.
My brother HP was dressed in the uniform issued by Mitie; it has changed the
traditional light blue shirt to white, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-mitie-hps.html.
To say that I was dissatisfied with my experience at the JRH is such an understatement
I can hardly describe it. I would like to put in a complaint, but where would I
begin? Maybe it's because I've come back after so long that I notice things
people who have been there all this time don't because it's crept up on them
slowly, like the classic frog in a saucepan analogy. Even if I hadn't been visiting
under such tragic circumstances I'd have been dismayed, but I was. All I can do
now is hope and pray I don't have to return there again anytime soon.
