Tuesday 6 January 2009

CELL PHONE HELL

A great big Boo to the idiot policy makers who decided to allow the free use of mobile phones in NHS hospitals (with the exception of scanner and other high tech rooms, of course). As far as I'm concerned, this will make the prospect of a hospital stay - or even a clinic visit -even more unbearable, not to mention the fear of being happy-snapped by some fuckwit with a cameraphone ('I'm at the hospital....See this woman with her breast removed.... Cop this pic of the crash trolley...') It is usually visitors, in my experience, not the patients themselves, who are guilty of crass behaviour in hospital. This could be to do with fear, or a sort of superiority - a drive to prove they're not physically sick (though often mentally retarded). Whatever it is, they're a nuisance, and the use of cellphones is going to turn this nuisance into a downright menace - to other patients (who don't want this kind of chirpy intimacy and unwanted intrusion into other - banal - lives) and to staff, who are harassed enough by all the other beeping and alarms and twittering and whingeing that goes on.

Cancer patients, of course, are amongst the most vulnerable of all. I think we should join together to get this daft policy reversed. I'm all for designated phone areas FOR PATIENTS ONLY- but not a go-anywhere roving menace. That's asking for trouble.

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