Patients deserve quiet to recover

Dear Editor: Recently, a very elderly friend of mine spent a week in Penticton hospital. Rife with germs hospitals generally kick you out after a day or two. It is better to recover at home then take the chance of contracting a more serious illness with an extended stay in the hospital.

Well my friend was pretty sick and had to spend a week in the hospital. When you are sick you need to sleep so the body can repair itself …or so we are told.

This friend was unable to sleep because of constant cell phone use by other bed residents in the ward. Too many people are addicted to cell phones today. They have little consideration for others who don’t want to be forced to listen to their constant and mostly inane conversations.

Fed up with it, my friend laid a complaint with the nurses about the noise. The nurses just shrugged and said there is nothing we can do about it. It is noisy in here and that is just the way it is.

So my friend put up with being unable to sleep for a week and upon arriving home contacted their lawyer and wrote the hospital out of the will. That act lost the hospital $300,000. When my friend was telling me this story it brought home my own experience when my husband had to spend a few days in the hospital. On both occasions, he was forced to listen to these same constant cell phone conversations by other bed residents that keep him awake when he needed to sleep.

The hospital has a duty of care. If people are well enough to spend hours on the phone they are well enough to either go home or sit in a chair outside the ward in the corridor to make their phone calls.

That little bit of callous unconcern for the well being of others in the ward cost the hospital and taxpayers like you and me $300.000.

How much money in donations has the hospital lost over the years when people go home and write them out of their will? We will never know. Hospital stay is not a vacation. The hospital needs to deal with this issue.

Elvena Slump Penticton