MY view of hospitals has always been coloured by impressions from the media.

I think the first image I had was gleaned from Carry On films, where hospitals were staffed by pompous consul-tants, bungling and randy junior doctors, saucy nurses and everything presided over by Hattie Jacques as the formidable Matron who swept through the wards like a galleon under full sail.

Then there were all those TV medical dramas where earnest and dashing doctors juggled heroic acts of life-saving with precarious love lives, leading up to today’s Casualty stuffed with non-stop life-or-death melodrama.

In fiction, it’s all go, go, go. In reality, it’s dull, dull, dull.

Over the last week I have made regular visits to a loved one who is hospital awaiting surgery on a major injury.

And the main impression is one of isolation and being forgotten.

All those bustling nurses and cheery orderlies on the TV shows? Nowhere to be seen.

Presumably budgetary cons-traints mean staffing is kept to a bare minimum, but having to wait half an hour in intense  pain after pressing the emer-gency call button for someone to attend is surely not right.

It’s not the fault of individual nurses and other staff at the sharp end, they are genuinely conscientious, if harassed.

I suspect the problem is, like a lot of things these days, down to over-management and, ironically, ‘elf ‘n safety’.

Years ago in my home town, there was an independent voluntary organisation dedica-ted to supporting local hospital patients.

It would raise money and spend it on TV rooms, books and other niceties which made hospital stays a bit more bearable, and organise rotas to go round wards with drinks, magazines, sweets, toiletries  and so on or just chat to patients and pass on messages, taking a little pressure off the  overworked medical staff.

I know in many areas the WRVS is in operation and I’m sure it and other volunteers do good work, up to a point.

But judging by the Southport and Ormskirk Hospital Trust’s published policy on voluntary workers, all volunteers have to be recruited and controlled by the management.

This involves filling in long application forms, providing references, attending inter-views, submitting to criminal records bureau investigations and undergoing ‘training’. No doubt this is intended to protect patients against weirdos, but I suspect it merely puts off genuine caring people who might otherwise give up their time to support the sick.

And as for providing TV rooms, well of course we now have Patientline units, which charge patients £2.90 a day for Coronation Street and Pac-Man and an outrageous premium for making or receiving telephone calls.

There’s progress for you.
m.montgomery@champnews.com