Cynthia Coultas gives a nurse’s perspective on visiting limitations, and other aspects of nursing children in the

Rowland’s memories certainly back up the importance of parental input and the reason for modern day thinking and the changes to the care of children in hospital. Hence the development of programmes such as those at Great Ormond Street and others.
Like all the other things involved with caring for the sick, visiting is a multifaceted problem. There were unexpected problems when unlimited visiting was instituted, which it took time to sort out. By the time this happened I had moved on to the general hospital, but the principles are the same. On the first day we were all prepared for welcoming extra people to occupy the patients. Brilliant, we would have more time to get on with individual treatments.

As the doors opened, a flood of people surged forward to the bedsides of their loved ones. With them arrived shopping bags, wheelers and arms full of gifts. By 10 am. coffees and teas were being drunk from flasks, and by lunch time sandwiches were being enjoyed by patients and visitors alike regardless of diets! A dangerous situation for diabetics, etc. and nurses had no idea whether patients were eating or just hiding problems behind the aura of fruitfulness provided by their families. This trend continued until the last buses were due to depart and those with cars dawdled even longer.

After a few weeks of this type of scenario, patients, staff and visitors were all complaining of fatigue. Patients were exhausted and suffering from constipation and other associated digestive upsets, staff were unable to perform personal care without embarrassing the patients as they explained what they wanted the patients to do to cooperate, and visitors were finding financial implications on a long term basis.

Also needing addressing was where all these people were to sit. Inevitably the beds seemed the obvious place. Plenty of room for two or three. As bed clothes were pulled tight, wounds groaned under the pressure and wound healing was being delayed. Added to all this of course was the added risk of infections carried in unknowingly by the visitors. I will mention MRSA and then say no more.

Again my point is that there is no easy answer to any one problem and sometimes the tug on the heart strings is the lesser of many evils.
In general, I suppose we can’t overlook what things were like at the time. 1950 was a very early post- war situation, and it is always difficult to put oneself in the mind set of an earlier period and what was happening generally to children. Money was short for everyone so food as well as clothing and everything else had to be completly eaten or worn out before it was thrown away or even still passed down to 'little Johnny'. I remember my father saying that if I didn't eat what was before me it would be returned at the next meal. That was no idle threat! 'Make do and mend', was the quote of the day for making clothing last longer, etc.

Drugs then were very minimal and basic (no broad spectrum antibiotics for example) hence lots of fresh air and rest! TB itself was also something that doctors were learning about, and without the appropriate drugs to help in the treatment they were fighting a very difficult battle.

The point Fred made about the staff being young and inexperienced is also valid. Again this doesn't or shouldn't happen today because the training separates the nurses from the wards until they have gained some knowledge. On the other side of the coin nursing is a very practical work and full knowledge can only be gained at the bedside in order that the intangible can become intuitive. We were taught about diseases and what to look for in a patient who were unwell.

Today nurses are taught about health and have some idea if a patient admitted for a cataract operation is at the time of admission developing a further problem. Not to take over the Dr's position but to know when to call for his attention.

...and Jane responds again

This added bit about your later visit to the hospital is also very interesting - it always struck me as curious that such a little place as Thorpe Arch incorporated a children's hospital, a munitions factory, then a prison and the British Library (which I think is still there). I wonder how much of that was due to re-using buildings that already exist.

I was surprised to hear that you had to be quite so assertive about staying with your son when he had his operation - I thought by then it was almost commonplace for parents to be allowed to be with their children, but obviously it all took longer than I thought, or at least did so in some places. I've read quite a lot of stuff on how Great Ormond Street hospital led the change, but of course that was up 'at the sharp end' of medical practice.

I would have liked to be able to 'walk the place' as an adult, as you did, not only lay ghosts – more to conjure up a few, especially as I have such vague memories of the actual physical aspect of the hospital. So I was sorry it wasn't there any more when we finally got around to going (in about 2005, I think). At the same time, I can understand your feelings about obliterating it. A similar hospital at Craig-y-Nos (I've mentioned their blogspot a number of times, since it inspired ours) was housed in a castle, which is now a luxury hotel, and rumoured to have at least one ghost of a child. Presumably new-build houses won’t have any at all.

Jane responds to Rowland and Fred

Thanks for sharing these memories - it must have been quite difficult getting them down on paper in order, and you're the first one to have done it so frankly! Like Fred, I find they remind me of some negative memories, too, especially of being left at the hospital by my parents. I'd been transferred from a hospital in Wales, and had spent about a month at home, encased in a plaster cast. I remember lying on a sofa in the front room downstairs. Looking back, I can't imagine how my mother coped; she told me that in the first days when I got home, I regressed to a sort of baby-ish state when I wouldn't let her out of my sight for fear she'd disappear, I suppose. She even had to negotiate to go to the loo. So I felt desperately homesick when I got to Thorpe Arch, and I remember being told off because I wouldn't stop crying.

I don't get the nightmares you write about, but I was a very fearful child for quite a long time. do remember a lot of harsh treatment from some of the nurses. I still remember how one night a nurse took away the rag doll I slept with to punish me for being naughty - don't remember what I'd done - and gave it to the girl in the next bed. This doll was made for me by my Granny, and I think it was like a safety blanket to a smaller child. I cried and cried till in the end this girl got fed up and gave it back to me for a bit of peace. The nurse came to see whether I'd fallen asleep crying, I suppose, saw me with the doll, and took it away again... That kind of thing seemed like pure malice to me.

However, Fred had these second thoughts after responding to your email, which fit well with what I want to say here: "Maybe it's too easy to judge the MHH nurses by today's standards. Some of their actions would probably have been considered far less shocking fifty years ago, and were probably based on their own childhood experiences. Fred remembers his parents threatening to serve up uneaten food at the next meal time. My own parents' reaction to my pickiness was to take the plate away from me when they'd finished eating: "Oh!, so you don't want any more", till I got so hungry I ate pretty well everything that was put in front of me, with a few exceptions, like slimy mushrooms and tapioca (as I think I've said before). As their contributions to the blog show, many of the nurses were trainees and probably only in their teens with little knowledge of how to deal with awkward, stressed children in an alien environment.

I think the once a fortnight limit on visiting was the rule, actually - as you'll see from the other messages. What really used to bug us, though, was that the visit day would sometimes be postponed a week if it coincided with some apparently arbitrary date, like the 1st Saturday of the month. Then we had to wait three weeks.

I've done a bit of research into the way the rules on visiting changed, as child psychologists became aware of the damage early, sudden separation from parents could do to children. In 1956, under the Labour government of the time, the Ministry of Health set up a committee which took evidence from a huge range of people - doctors and nurses, of course, but also parents of children like us and child psychiatrists. They issued a report in 1959, called the Platt report, discussing the whole thing, and recommending more frequent visiting - though they recommended that it should be carefully managed in long-stay hospitals, where it was also important to create some semblance of a normal life for children, including school and independent play time.

Some of the evidence they considered came from letters in reaction to a series of BBC programmes. Only the scripts are left, and I've been able to see some of them in the BBC's Written Archives. They were broadcast by Woman's Hour, and some were outside broadcasts to village halls, to conduct a sort of panel discussion with local people, a bit like Any Questions nowadays, I suppose. Many ordinary people, but especially doctors and nursing sisters, were against more visiting, which they thought would disturb the ward routine and upset the children when the parents left. But the research showed that children settled better if they saw their parents more - couldn't we just have told them that!

After that, they began to bring in new policies and nowadays, of course, we have daily visiting and parents allowed to stay with their kids. I'm sure these would have created other problems for our parents - my home was in Pontefract, so the journey for my Mum was a long one, too, as she had no car, though I remember kind friends giving her lifts in their cars.