If you have been to the cinema recently and arrived in time for the adverts, you may already know what I am talking about. Somewhere between promotions for mega-burgers in glorious technicolour and exotic holiday destinations, you are plunged into what seems an endless, but is actually only a two-minute, horror flick, entitled ‘Sicker than the patients’.
The fitness of at least half the nursing and support staff I encountered left a lot to be desired
It is two minutes of unrelieved gloom and despair, book-ended by a family rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ around a sick patient (Daddy), who – lucky guy – appears to have a room to himself, not just a curtained bay where the sounds and smells penetrate from all around. Enabling a family to celebrate with (I think the current term is) ‘a loved one’ is presented as a rare glimmer of light in a life that is otherwise all drudgery and stress.
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