Hospital food, again

[ailbhe]

A friend's toddler is in hospital far, far away from me, and over the course of two brief hospital stays in the paediatric wards, they've discovered this about the food:

Parents staying with their infants and toddlers are not catered for at all. There are vending machines selling crisps and chocolate, and a gift shop selling boxes of chocolates and biscuits. There is a kitchen with facilities for making tea, coffee, and glasses of tap water.

In January, the mother asked for some fresh fruit for her recuperating toddler, instead of the "stodgy pie thing & custard" normally provided as the last course in a meal. She was told that the hospital did not provide fresh food, but one of the nurses gave her some fruit from her own lunchbox. She was also given a low-fat yoghurt to feed her one-year-old, and although she asked for a full-fat one, they were unable to provide it.

This visit, her toddler was aslepp at lunchtime, so her lunch was given to another child's parent. when she woke hungry, a nurse gave made her some toast, and gave her a low-fat yoghurt, and a banana one of the staff had brought in for their own lunch.

She has heard a rumour that there's a cafe in the hospital but was unable to discover where it was while she was in there, in spite of asking.

And what was this toddler supposed to be recovering from?

Some unidentified gastric disorder.

That's right, never mind coping with mere intolerances, they can't find palatable food for people who are in hospital specifically for a tummy upset. The child wasn't put on a special diet of any kind, there was no medical recommendation to avoid any foods, but I know from experience that making a pukey baby eat isn't easy even when you have a whole houseful of favourite, nutritious, non-irritating foods.

When I was a sick child, my mother fed me meals on trays, with pretty crockery, and usually a piece of fruit fanned out in wedges to look like a flower. Light, attractive, palatable meals of fresh ingredients.

There has got to be a way to get this into hospitals without bankrupting anyone.

I'd love to hear a report of food in a private hospital in the UK, because I know Dublin and Galway hospital food isn't much better, though I think Cork might be generally ok (I haven't heard complaints, at least).

Comments

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

I think that it's a matter of priorities. I think that the average hospital must not prioritize its food service. I've never worked in a hospital, but I've worked at all levels of food service for a couple of decades.

The average hospital seems to be focused on providing food at the lowest cost. One of the easiest ways to provide food at low cost is to make a lot of it in one kitchen, and distribute it throughout. Another way of making the food cheap is to make as little variety as possible. The more foods-stock in the kitchen, the higher the food cost.

If patients don't eat the food, it is no skin off the hospitals' nose. Ditto, if relatives and friends bring food in. I have no idea how one would pressure the hospital system into making the provision of fresh, appealing and healthy food a priority, though I can easily imagine how it might be done: a staff of professional chefs instead of "dieticians", decentralized kitchens (imagine a kitchen per/hospital unit, say, pediatrics, with a chef who would specialize in cooking for young, sick kids), and, of course, and increased budget for the above.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Except, of course, that it's plenty of skin off the hospital's nose if the patient recovers more slowly because of poor nutrition - they do say that about a third of elderly patients are malnourished, mostly because they don't get helped to eat. I imagine this is less true for small kids because they usually have parents struggling to compensate, but still. What on earth is stopping them from having fruit bowls in the ward kitchen? That would cost only the price of the fruit, and if it were the only free on-tap food available, I bet it would buy itself back in patient outcomes.