Although one thing that always stood out is no one is expected to sleep in a hospital. A nurse or doctor will likely be in every few hours doing something to wake you up. And in between there will always be noise from the hall.
The TV thing is infuriating. Apparently our government decided that the NHS should not front the cost of entertainment (which kinda makes sense) but instead we now have for-profit companies screwing over the vulnerable instead. It seems entirely wrong.
> Although gyms are different, likely because if you are healthy enough to hit the gym you are healthy enough to go home.
This really isn't true. Just because someone has broken their arm doesn't mean they're not capable of 30 minutes cycling on a static bike. Just because I was on IV antibiotics 6 times a day didn't mean I couldn't have burnt off some energy in a safe and healthy way.
The lack of sleep _is_ crazy, but even more so the insistence that you should go to bed and wake up early. "ooh, all you do is sleep all day!" - well yes. because my other alternative is sitting in a chair staring at a wall all day (and anyway, I covered 8 miles on crutches last night).
Not everyone is in the hospital as a patient and not every patient is in the hospital for something very dire. For example, I was in the hospital for 3 days once getting IV steroids. In between doses and things like blood sugar checks, I had no need to stick around the hospital bed. I truly could have happily and safely walked on a treadmill, for example. This was before most hospitals here had wifi, though, and would have been better than being bored.
A few months ago, I was in observation for 6 or so hours due to a medication I was starting. I had a portable heart monitor, and really simply needed hourly blood pressure and pulse checks along with simple access to hospital staff. At one point, my pulse was low and I needed - for my own health - to be active. Luckily, I simply walked around outside, stopped at the kiosk (gas station without the gas), and was back before my next check.
I'm sure there are slews of other situations that one needs to be in a hospital, but not necessarily confined to a hospital bed.
Please don't perpetuate the myth that sickness can be seen from the outside by a layperson.
I'm assuming GGP was not referring to physical therapy facilities however, some hospital inpatients do require that.
I spent 10 weeks as an inpatient on 6* daily IV antibiotics (which would have been impossible to do at home) to treat a serious infection in the bone in my foot. On some of my better days I managed to cover nearly 10 miles on crutches or in a wheelchair. Being able to use a gym to work out would have been better and substantially safer all round.
On the flipside, it's amazing how many doors one can get through using nothing but a lollypop-stick from the ice-cream machine in reception or a pair of crutches to open gates from the other side. And technically the "no public access" signs don't apply because you're not public, you're an in-patient at that point... but there has to be better ways of staying fit and sane that would apply to the other 99.9% of patients.
Modification or criticism of NHS seems like an off limits topic with UK residents, and it just seems like a weird topic to be off limits so I don't really understand
The difficulty is that "Americanisation" is this catch all term (Along with Neoliberalism etc.) that doesn't have a defined meaning, but is wide enough to beat any non-left wing solution into the ground. I don't think anyone actually wants the NHS to be more american, but most european healthcare systems have more in common with American one's than ours to some degree (Excluding universality, which it obviously lacks)
Imagine if the Orange Book was released now, with it's plans to introduce insurance to the NHS: I can picture the momentum activists screaming now.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/0... for example (old poll but still usable) 22% of people say the NHS is the best healthcare system in the world when it clearly isn't when measured by various measures most notably cancer outcomes which are pretty bad compared to some countries https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/110/1/5/278036
I do think that it needs to be open to criticism, though. There are issues in the NHS and I'm sure there are problems with the way that National Insurance works (our way of paying for the NHS). I have unfortunately had a lot of exposure to the NHS and the way some things work is frustrating. For example, I am unable to get an insulin pump to treat my Diabetes because there are national requirements that I do not meet. I undertstand why this is in place (budget cuts) but that doesn't stop it from being frustrating - I'd essentially have to sabotage my condition to the point where my control was so bad that I would qualify for a pump.
Like the other commenter said, I think what most people hear when people talk of reforming the NHS is an Americanisation of the NHS, and they believe this is inherently bad. Rightly or wrongly, that is the impression that people get. It's a shame because I think it shuts down all talk of reformation, despite the fact that there are other European countries which also have socialised healthcare but operate in different ways which I have heard are more efficient. I haven't done enough research into this to really provide any helpful comparisons, but if anyone has any information or links which explore the funding and service provision of other socialised health care provision in contrast with the UK, I'd love to have a read.
There are lots of modifications of the NHS that people would welcome.
The core features we want to keep are 1) free at the point of delivery 2) provided by NHS organisations (although even this is changing).
"The" NHS is incredibly complex and most people have very little idea about how it works which makes any discussion about it very difficult.
Very few people realise, for example, that there are very few healthcare systems in Europe organised like the NHS yet most deliver better results. However, "insurance" is a dirty word because it's associated with American Healthcare rather than continental Europe.
7 countries spend more than healthcare (% of GDP) than us, but 17 score better on the EHCI (Euro Health Consumer Index) and 17 have longer life expectancies.
It's also not viable politically (debate around the NHS, that is) because the Labour party is currently being run by it's socialist faction e.g. Some of Corbyn's lieutenants are proper marxists.
tl;dr it sounds like a religion because it is a religion to most
St. Thomas' in London (UK) has a gym for patients that need to do phisyotherapy exercises. I don't recall treadmills or squat racks, but they had medicine balls, free weights, instructors, music, and so on.
> £40/week
Sounds like UK…
Britannia Hospital?