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Care Opinion

Catering and Wheelchair availability

Posted By piscessk48

"Catering and Wheelchair availability"

About: St George Hospital

(as the patient),

Very disappointed with the catering at St George Public Hospital.

I have spent time in many hospitals and St George food is on the bottom of my ratings.  Of a rating scale 1-10 I give them a 3. The catering name is My Choice - I have to say it is not My Choice.

I feel the food is bland and overcooked and freshly served meals would be healthier and more palatable. I believe you need more assortment of menu items and a visual of menu items instead of kitchen staff giving an account of the menu items.  You could then have time to choose and decide what you want.
Another hospital I know of has a great new system where patients, carers or catering staff can order via computer screen from their bed.  This screen is also your TV, Internet and movie screen.  Also, allow time to eat the meal before collecting the tray.  I feel there is a lot of wastage of plastic utensils and other containers and it is no good for the environment and garbage disposal in Australia.
Another strange concept is that there are only sugar-free drinks available throughout the hospital (even in the drink machines).  You can purchase cakes and desserts containing sugar? At least the drink machines should have sugar drinks available.

I believe the availability of wheelchairs for use by patients is very scarce and more wheelchairs are required.

The medical and nursing staff in the hospital were excellent and they get a 10/10 rating.

Environment

Environment


Food

Food


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Responses

Response from Leisa Rathborne, General Manager, St George Hospital 4 years ago
Leisa Rathborne
General Manager,
St George Hospital

Submitted on 15/08/2019 at 4:30 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 16/08/2019 at 8:57 AM

picture of Leisa Rathborne

Dear piscessk48,

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. I was disappointed to read of your views on the food choices at St George Hospital.

St George Hospital has recently changed to the My Food Choice Model, and the feedback to date has been positive.

The implementation of My Food Choice allows patients to choose their menu closer to meal times. This allows patients to choose meals that they feel like eating on the day. On admission our patients are given a pictorial menu appropriate to their diet, this remains with patients during their stay. The benefit of this is it allows patients to browse the menu prior to Food Service Staff coming to take their meal orders. The pictorial menus are also carried on the Food Trolleys during mid-meal service to offer to patients.

I do apologise that the food you were served was bland and overcooked. As the food provided on the menu is required to meet a vast range of dietary requirements, no herbs/spices or salt and pepper are included in the meal. Salt and pepper can be ordered separately if required. As a result of your feedback about the overcooked food, we will look at our reheating system to ensure that the temperatures are correct. We will also make sure that we do some taste testing after this process to make sure that the presentation and appearance of the food meets the standards.

All plastic cutlery containers used in our Food Services are recyclable and St George Hospital follows the closed loop process where all patient trays go into a separate bin and are collected for recycling on a daily basis.

St George Hospital is involved in the District Healthy Food and Drink Initiative and as a result healthy snack, food and drink options are available in our vending machines. Besides the sugar-free soft drinks, other drink alternatives are available, such as flavoured milk and juices.

Each ward in St George Hospital has access to a wheelchair. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide these wheelchairs for use by one patient.

I appreciated your kind words about the medical and nursing staff. We are very fortunate to have such dedicated staff working here at St George Hospital and it is rewarding for our staff to receive such positive feedback.

Thank you again for taking the time to provide your feedback as it really does help us to improve the services we provide.

Kind regards

Leisa Rathborne

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful

Update posted by piscessk48 (the patient)

A pictorial menu would have been nice. One was not shown or given to me during my 5 day stay. I would encourage some taste testing with delivery time taken into consideration.

Thank you.

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