Bedside TV in Hospitals

Safetyone

Now that most Hospitals charge for the use of bedside TV`s I was wondering what are the charges up and down the country for useing them per day //per week
Walton for instance charge £5 per day or £15 discount for one week`s use (£20)

mtc863

I was in Doncaster Royal Infirmary over the summer after an op for a few days- standard freeview was available plus radio on the TVs.
In the ward I was in, all was free and no problem using a mobile phone on the ward either.

Parva

I was in three hospitals over a two month period just before Xmas last year. Leeds General Infirmary had individual consoles with 7" screens. There was nothing available on it for free, everything had to be paid in advance for. That said it did offer free telephone calls to geographic numbers and some limited internet access too. From memory it was £15 for 5 days, I can't remember what the daily rate was unfortunately. The channels were pretty basic too, offering no more (indeed somewhat less) than you can get on Freeview at home.

Birmingham Royal Orthopaedic Hospital had shared TV's up on the wall which were free to use. These were shared at the rate of one to two beds on the open ward, one per room in the one-bed private rooms and if you were unlucky enough to be in the womens open ward, one TV was shared between eight beds, although again free. There was always a clamour to get possesion of the remote control (even on the mens open ward where TV's were 1 to 2 beds). Still, it was free at least.

St James Leeds (Bexley Wing) despite being the most modern was actually the worst of all. There was no TV on the open wards although there was a TV to share in the day room which was free to use. If you were lucky enough to get a private room then these did have free TV access. However, you were allowed to bring in your own small portable TV. By small I mean one of the 7" or so LCD's that you can buy now with digital freeview decoders built in (used with headphones). I did this and it made my stay that much more bearable.

Mobile phones were allowed in all three of the hospitals.

Chrissiew

In Dorchester the cheapest is £7.50 a day, but for £10 a day you get 4 TV channels and 4 film channels plus free phone calls to landlines, it goes up if you want use of the internet, I personaly think its very expensive.

OneYorkshireLass

Parva wrote: »

St James Leeds (Bexley Wing) despite being the most modern was actually the worst of all. There was no TV on the open wards although there was a TV to share in the day room which was free to use. If you were lucky enough to get a private room then these did have free TV access. However, you were allowed to bring in your own small portable TV. By small I mean one of the 7" or so LCD's that you can buy now with digital freeview decoders built in (used with headphones). I did this and it made my stay that much more bearable.

My grandad's in Gledhow wing at the moment and he's just spent two weeks in a room with no telly or radio at all. If it were me I would've gone stark raving bonkers. He's now on a ward, but the dayroom just has plastic chairs in it.

A fella down the hall from him looks to have been in his room a long time, he's got his own telly (there are tv points in the room), his own cabinet to stand it on and a radio and books. They'll be charging him rent soon!

Patronus

I was in in October and from what I can remember, you bought cards (5, 10, 15, etc) and that amounted to a certain amount of hours. Think it ended up being quite expensive if you were the telly watching type.

Parva

OneYorkshireLass wrote: »

My grandad's in Gledhow wing at the moment and he's just spent two weeks in a room with no telly or radio at all. If it were me I would've gone stark raving bonkers. He's now on a ward, but the dayroom just has plastic chairs in it.

A fella down the hall from him looks to have been in his room a long time, he's got his own telly (there are tv points in the room), his own cabinet to stand it on and a radio and books. They'll be charging him rent soon!

Sounds pretty similar to Bexley Wing then. The private rooms had a flat-screen TV but the wards had nothing, you had to be able to mobilise to the dayroom for that. As I said, you could at least take your own mini-TV in. Alas the signal reception is very poor in certain areas of each wing (of which I was in a bad one) so I had a special amplified aerial. Got everything working eventually, I had to hide Jodrell Bank that I was running behind the curtains! I kid you not!

The irony is that it cost me £60 for the TV, £20 for the aerial and 3 days of twiddling, just got it all working and guess what, they decided I was ok to come home..... Some you win....

paddedjohn

A friend was in Whiston hospital the other week and it was £10/day so he used his laptop to watch tv.

Parva

paddedjohn wrote: »

A friend was in Whiston hospital the other week and it was £10/day so he used his laptop to watch tv.

All well and good but there are several implications here. How did he connect his laptop in order to receive TV? A lucky man indeed if his laptop had a DVB-T tuner built in and he could simply plug it into a convenient wall socket.

Alternatively he could have been streaming the media from a broadband connection provided by the hospital, if so then please name that hospital as it's a rarity!

Finally, one has to assume that he was connecting via a tethered connection to his mobile phone. Most networks frown on this sort of activity.

More details please.

Sequeena

The last 3 times I've been in all were baby related. First one was when I gave birth, I had a private room so got my own tv (free). Second time my son was 2 weeks old, we were put in a private room as he had no vaccinations so again our own tv (free). The last time we were on children's ward. No tv in the ward but my iPhone has 3G so I was able to go online and watch TV that way.

faerie~spangles

My 'local' Forth Valley Royal Hospital offers free personal TV screens at every bedside and free internet access for patients.