I find the discussion of gifts packs, pro and con, very interesting, but
want to ask a question that is a bit larger in concept.

Why is it that hospital maternity wards feel it necessary to give their
patients gifts on their departure? Do other wards in the same hospital do
this? My mother has had a number of hospitalizations for acute problems
(none serious, thank goodness) but several involving surgery of some sort.
At NO time has she received a gift on her departure.

What she and other paitnets talked about when I was there with her was the
quality of the medical and nursing care they received (she was often in a
2- or larger-bed ward where other paitnets often helped one another when a
nurse was tied up or unavailable for some reason).

But when mothers leave maternity wards, they talk about what they got!?
What is wrong with that picture?

I wonder if making up breastfeeding-friendly gift packs isn't really a
backwards way of dealing with the problem. If no such gifts were given (are
they necessary to make the patient think positively about thehospital?),
wouldn't the empahsis then be on the quality of care given rather than on
the freebies that really aren't?

Call me an idealist, but I really would prefer to think that good nurses
would prefer patients to appreciate their skill and emphathetic care rather
than whether they got as big a packet of goodies as the roommate or the
woman down the hall.



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