How to Survive in Hospital
- Author:
ainarine vvnitenorn
Eyre Methuen, 85p
As a little something to take along to a hospital patient, this book has a great deal going for it. The pictures (by Bill Tidy), while lacking the great Giles’ special brand of malicious hospital humour, are funny and reasonably apposite. The text is informative and lighthearted enough without being arch or gigglegiggle (a rare enough achievement in humorous writing) and above all it’s reasonably priced?in these days when you have to mortgage your house to buy the average hardcover book.
Since I am reviewing this publicacation for ‘Mind’ magazine, obviously I paid special attention to the chapter called ‘Mental Illness’. It is a bit thin, but then, so is the whole book. In sixty-four pages it covers everything from appointments to how to be a perfect patient, touching on bedpans, drugs and allergies, maternity care, child care, and heaven knows what else on the way; so to cavil at a brace-and-a-bit of pages on mental illness is perhaps a bit ungracious.
There are a couple of points worth making, however. The chapter starts off by talking about psychiatric wards and psychiatric treatment, but by the end is talking about ‘mental homes’ which is a shade old-fashioned to say the least; and why say ‘no one minds what you eat (usually) when earlier in the book there was reference to monoamine oxidase inhibitors? The likelihood of there being patients on MAOI drugs is rather high in a psychiatric ward, and their doctors mind very much indeed what these patients eat. So a blanket warning not to bring in cheese, red wine, pickled herrings and the like could have been rather useful.
Altogether, though, speaking as both a nurse and a patient, this book is one I liked. But when the book goes into a second edition?which seems likely with the ever-continuing flow of patients in and out of hospital?someone should check the spellings. There is no reason why Katharine Whitehorn should have known that ‘prophilaxis’ and ‘cistitis’ are mis-spellings but someone at her publishers should have checked up on these rather ‘inwords’. It does tend to make us of the cognoscenti curl the lip in selfsatisfaction to observe such slips. A childish reaction, perhaps, but then, reviewers often do, just like hospital patients, show regressive behaviour.
Claire Rayner
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