Patient Line is a disgusting disgrace Blog Discussion

Chunters_a_lot

The Patient and Public Involvement Forums conducted a nationwide survey in April this year about Patientline.

You can read about it here:

http://www.cppih.org/maymediawebversion.htm

Basically nearly everyone - patients, relatives and carers were unhappy with the cost of Patientline.

madauri

What? Are you saying you are not allowed to contact directly with someone in hospital if you don't agree to be ripped off your money by a special phone service?
:eek:Why should this be so? Aren't there direct phones in the hospitals?

hurrah

madauri wrote:

What? Are you saying you are not allowed to contact directly with someone in hospital if you don't agree to be ripped off your money by a special phone service?
:eek:Why should this be so? Aren't there direct phones in the hospitals?

No you cant normally speak directly to someone at their bedside in a NHS Hospital unless you use this rip off service ,hence this long thread discussing the matter.;)

You can of course still phone the ward using normal geographical numbers to ascertain patients condition,and if the patient is fit enough a kind nurse might just allow to talk to them briefly.:cool:

Ivana_Tinkle

The other thing about Patientline is that there's no way to turn it off. You can turn the screen to face away from the bed, and you can mute the volume, but mine kept randomly turning itself up again. I'd just spent 16 hours in labour, and being woken by a very loud cartoon every time I managed to drop off nearly sent me over the edge! I can kind of joke about this now but it's really not funny at all. It reminded me of those stories of how they tortured prisoners in Guantanemo Bay by playing Barney videos. If you were deliberately trying to induce postnatal depression this would be a great way to go about it.

madauri

Therefore they cannot receive your messages unless you pay extra and at the same time they cannot avoid being annoyed by this same service.
Ludicrous.

pickle

I think it is an absolute disgrace. I was stuck in hospital for a week after a traumatic birth and my baby was in neonatal care. My family live overseas and it would have cost me an absolute fortune to ring them on patientline and they wouldn't have been able to ring me as they are on a pension. They were very worried and despite my husband phoning them they were worried sick about me until I managed to drag myself outside the hospital building a few days later to make a mobile phone call. I was not able to get the family to ring the ward phone as it was not permitted. It was costly enough to ring my husband who was a few suburbs away and I could only have very short conversations. At least I was in for only a week but what about people who are stuck in there for weeks if not months?

[Deleted User]

I would have no problem using my own mobile phone on a ward - any current piece of medical equiptment should have enough electromagnetic shielding to withstand a mobile's effects - the only things that might not would be old ECG machines. The rules will probably be relaxed soon:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3932563.stm
http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&useSecondary=true&ssDocName=CON2023751

My gf works in A&E, and i know they'll take offence if your ringtone is bad and goes off, but it doesn't worry them that it'll intefer with their equiptment, just their sanity

BankSlayer_2

I had the unfortunate task of working at PatientLine's call centre for a few months whilst I was at college - I hated it!!

Everything is pretty much geared around ripping off people that are sick, and it's partially behind the reason I left in the end. I had a really uncomfortable feeling about the amounts being charged for their 'service'.

The worst thing was, as has been previously mentioned, the number of rogue units that couldn't be switched off, meaning that they'd be blaring all night in the wards.

So badly designed it's appalling.

Aaaaant

pickle wrote:

I think it is an absolute disgrace. I was stuck in hospital for a week after a traumatic birth and my baby was in neonatal care. My family live overseas and it would have cost me an absolute fortune to ring them on patientline ....

While I sympathise, I don't actually think that's Patientline's fault. You would have found it a lot harder for someone overseas to get in touch with you ten years ago when there was no Patientline.

Just like before Patientline there are still payphones in all corridors you can use. It's actually cheaper at 10p a minute to ring someone from Patientline than a payphone (20p) - although you do have to spend at least £2.50 on a card.

The point is is that Patientline brings benefits and an added luxury that wasn't there before. The communal tvs and payphones on wards and corrdiors still exist just like before Patientline. So if you don't like Patientline just shove it aside!

madauri

Yeah, luxury is the word. Because it becomes a luxury to keep in touch with your family.
Why shouldn't there be normal internal phones like in other places, where you just phone the hospital, then they put you through to the room you ask for?