From old to new

In 2008 and 2009 I had the dubious honour to spend some time in hospital. That hospital was the Centre Hospitalier William Morey in Chalon-sur-Saône, in those days located in an old building on a small island in the Saône.

The old hospital

The care I received was excellent, but the building was old and rickety and the Intensive Care Unit, where I stayed twice, had rooms for one or two patients. Once one was released from Intensive Care one ended up in the normal wards for, if I remember correctly, 6 to 8 patients per ward.

The new hospital

When I recently had to go to hospital again for two nights, the old hospital had ceased to exist and I ended up in the brand new hospital of Chalon at the edge of town near the station. Fortunately there was no need to go to the Intensive Care again, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I ended up in a single room (with - at a price! – a radio, TV and internet connection). The nurse told me that the new hospital only had single and double rooms.

Single room (picture from a brochure of the hospital)

That was of course very nice for the patients, but the nursing staff was not so happy about it, for the simple reason that there were not only more, but also bigger rooms which increased the amount of walking they had to do day in day out. However, the care was excellent again, and, though I would have preferred to stay at home, one can think of a worse place to spend a few nights.

View from the old hospital

The only thing I missed in this new building was the view. In the old hospital I had a stunning view over the Saône on the two towers of the Cathedral Saint-Vincent. The new hospital offered me a view on an inner courtyard of the building; not exactly very inspiring. However, to be honest: no matter what the view is, what the quality of the care is and how comfortable the rooms are, it is always better to avoid hospital if one can!

However, I prefer this view!