Is hospital food packaging a problem?

I have had that problem with ‘fresh’ soup and also with tubs of fruit pieces. Even getting the protective cap off before you get to the thin seal is an effort. Things where you have to break a tab off are another difficulty and I still have the wounds to prove it. Opening small bottles of orange juice is almost impossible because the caps have been put on and sealed under pressure by machine and there is not enough to get hold of in order to twist the cap off.

I had some toothpaste recently where the inner seal over the tube outlet had lost its tab and I had to stab it to make an opening.

It’s best to leave the surgery to the surgeons but it might be handy to have some instruments to hand when going into hospital. “Scalpel . . . forceps”.

These problems are familiar to me too, John. Missing tabs seems a very common problem.

Back with the challenges for patients, I have seen people struggling with cartons of protein drinks and straws. These are often given to people who are not eating an adequate diet.

I worked in a NHS hospital 45 yrs ago when there were auxiliary nurses to help the less able to eat ( well before excessive packaging) do these good people still exist or have they been deemed unnecessary by Govt. cutbacks?

Time to bring back Matron me thinks!

I agree with you Carole. Nursing was more continuous in those days. I remember when my mother was in hospital there were always several nurses and auxiliaries on the ward to look after the patients and a staff nurse to supervise.

I am not quite sure, given the immense [and rising] resources poured into the NHS every year, whether it is fair to attribute staffing shortages to government cuts or a desire to keep extending services to more and more expensive treatments and procedures than the system was designed for. The principal hospital in Norfolk has over 7,000 staff, carries out 153 operations a day, and serves 2,250 meals a day to patients, as well as providing a huge range of out-patient services and dealing with 260 daily in A&E. It also relies on 600 volunteers to support the permanent establishment. Over the last few decades there has been an explosion of demand for hospital services and cutting back on some ancillary functions has been an inevitable consequence. Despite the massive financial provision represented by the statistics they still want more.

I quite agree about Marks and Spencer’s packets of sandwiches , I am elderly but not disabled and I find it almost impossible to open packets without using scissors. So do not use them as a good example!

Unfortunately, standards are not freely available to the general public. This has to change, in my view. The public could provide valuable input about whether certain standards are being complied with. They are not all highly technical.

Standards cost a lot of money to produce but equally cost a lot of money to buy – this one is £212 to non-members (of BSI) – because many have a relatively small circulation. However they contain information that some “outsiders”, who look seriously at topics, would find very useful. Once upon a time (central) libraries used to keep copies in their reference sections, but doubt if that is now the case.

I wonder how many Standards Which? have, or can access?

How do you make such documents available for reference by the public? A non-printable view-only version on line perhaps? Those in the business of using standards would still no doubt buy paper copies for constant reference.

Many standards – this ISO for example – give a preview of the scope and contents. It also lists references used to help generate the standard, which might be as useful, if not more, than the standard itself.

This is off-topic – sorry.

I would still ask the basic question: why do hospital staff not. as a matter of course, open any packaging for patients and present the food properly? Is it not in their job description?

It was the cost of obtaining a copy that prompted my comment. Universities make use of the document supply service of the British Library to obtain copies of journal articles (electronic or photocopies), book loans, etc. It’s a wonderful service that I’ve used thousands of times. I have never ordered copies for private use but it looks as if the public can purchase photocopies of articles for about £12 and DRM-protected pdf versions for around £5. From memory you could print one copy of an article but not retain a usable pdf. Having said that, I don’t know if BL supply or even hold Standards. It would be interesting to continue the discussion but as you say, it’s off-topic. 🙁

I wonder if the NHS has standards for ensuring that hospital patients are properly fed, which obviously would include access to their food.

Thanks for raising this subject, and I M O it’s deserving of its own Thread – Please may one be started if there isn’t one in existence already.
I’m on a daily dose of 7 tabs, at night, every night.
I have a daily dose plastic container which is great.
BUT
Getting the tablets out of their foil packaging is becoming increasingly difficult, because my hands are increasingly less able to pop out the seeming smaller and smaller pills from their bubbles.
Such is the effort needed to release some, that they fly off to freedom and hide.
All comments, suggestions, hints, home-made release tools, etc will be recognized with a +1 vote.
PLEASE may we have a Thread on this general, Medical item, aspect of access

My FIL who was losing his sight (and whose fingers didn’t work as well as they used to) used to very methodically work his way through the boxes of pills taking one out of an ice cream box of pill boxes and putting each box to the other side as he went. He counted them in and counted them out.

He held them over a large black plastic bowl saved from a ready-meal so he could see and hear the pill when it landed and find it.

He found that the ones that the pharmacy supply (and the carers prefer) ready-filled didn’t work for him. They were to fiddly to open, pills stuck to the see-through top, and it was easy to drop a pill. If you dropped one pill from a group of pills together it was impossible to tell which one it was that you had lost. So the one by one approach from each pack in turn worked best.

Some plastic pill boxes that you fill yourself start with Sunday and some with Monday. Some are impossible to open with old and not very sensitive or strong fingers. We needed to put a lump of blutack on the first day to show which way up/where to start.

If you couldn’t open it…… how did you sample it to know that it was ”so revolting”…. or did you get a Food taster to do it for you?

If only more hospitals could learn from your experience. I hope the quality of the food and the care and attention given to you aided your recovery

It should of course be part of the assessment of each in-patient whether or not they can manage the food delivery or will need assistance just as it is necessary to find out in advance who can go to the toilet on their own or not. It’s an essential part of the care. It does seem that standards around the country differ widely. It seems to me that most hospitals couldn’t function fully without a lot volunteers. It makes you wonder at what number of additional billions of pounds the NHS would say “That’s enough”. I suspect it is infinite. Given that resource allocation is therefore a fundamental aspect of hospital care I just hope that the decisions are made by clinicians rather than administrators.