"As an interested visitor to the hospital"

Anything else?

I am contributing today, not as a patient who has needed care at my local community hospital, but one who has visited in order to do my own research, and to gather for myself, a first hand impression. I have an elderly father i oversee, and also a brother who is about to undergo back surgery at Salisbury, and will be comming to live at my Father's for part of is convelescence and re-habilitation. I have visited many institutions in my time, sometimes off the cuff, and you can learn a lot this way. The right ethos certainly pervaded this one! The nurse took time out of her busy schedule to show me around, and i was immediately impressed by how clean the hospital was. She talked to me of an approach which i thought defined the heart of a community hospital; that of providing care and extending that care to be felt by not just the patient but their family and friends 'equally'. How else is it possible to create an environment which makes possible the recovery and re-habilitation of a loved one? The staff at this hospital care enough also to smile at you, a mere visitor like me. Two qualified nurses, and and two buzy Health care Assistants met my eyes with a warm smile, as they continued attending to two elderly lady patients, and i immediately felt my oxitocin levels rise (the happy hormone) so very important when one is new in hospital, visitor or patient! The manager also made time to have an informative private chat with me, that was both helpful and reassuring. I am only sorry that i can't talk here as a patient, but i certainly feel better already, anyway, just having met some of the staff. I implore everyone to take the time to sit down and right their own review, based on their own experience, because take it from me, we all want to preserve this community gem, which we are all likely to need either ourselves, or for our family and friends. Just one more thing, it should be noted that writing a review is 'mandatory' rather than 'optional', because we have a fight on our hands to save our essential community services, so don't make the mistake of believing that what you say doesn't count. There are those who would have us believe that our voice doesn't make a difference, why? Because they know it does. The collective is powerful, so keep going, pour in those reviews everyone, and don't stop!