It's Changed!

 

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.