Even the hospital fails on disability access

milo

My youngest stepdaughter was recently admitted to our local hospital for surgery.  Now, I'm pleased to say that she's home again and absolutely fine.  I can't fault the nursing staff who were incredible in helping a teenager with autism deal with the stress of a hospital stay. 

As you can imagine, we spent a number of days a her bedside but this raised a number of issues for me as a wheelchair user. I'm amazed to say that the hospital isn't particularly wheelchair friendly. The parking machines are too high to be reached comfortably from my chair.  The card machines in the shop are on the top of a fairly high counter and don't reach down to my level,  leaving me tapping in my PIN over my head where anyone could see it. Most shocking of all though was that there was no disabled public toilet anywhere on the floor my stepdaughter was on. 

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised,  I was on an orthopaedic ward in the same hospital a few months ago and found that there was no wheelchair accessible loo on the ward even for me as a patient at the time. 

Bear in mind that I'm talking about a large hospital. If the needs of those with disabilities can't be met there, it makes me despair that anyone else can get it right. 

Chris_Alumni

Many thanks for sharing this Milo - has anyone had a similar experience?

Blue Frog

That's really bad @milo of all the places in the world you would expect a hospital to be accessible! 

We don't have very much luck either - fortunately my daughter is mainly seen in outpatients, but I have never found a hospital with anything remotely accessible in terms of toilets.

I resort to putting her in 2 nappies to go to appointments at the new purpose built Eye Hospital and praying we get home before the poo-nami is unleashed