Paris hospitals

I bet you'd be hard pressed to find articles on this kind of blogs about hospitals. Having spent four months in three different hospitals in Paris area, I consider myself a bit of an expert on this now. Three hospitals and three very different experience. One thing I will say about public hospitals, they are really good places to lose weight. I thought it difficult to find bad food in Paris. Boy, did I find out where bad food lurks: public hospitals. When I first stayed in a public hospital (july 2013), the nurse came and asked me what I wanted for dinner in the morning or the night before. After being read out the choices for that night (entrée or appetizer, plat principal or what we call entré in the US, and desserts and cheese), I was so impressed and was actually looking forward to dinner.

But oh boy, when it finally arrived, my disappointment was bigger than Texas. In France, how good your food looks is as just important as how it tastes. Not in this hospital. Presentation at public hospital ? Shame, shame, shame. Styrofoam box with sorry looking meat or chicken, tired or dried out vegetable and no taste whatsoever. How could they make food so bad ? The food apparently arrives from somewhere else (I imagine an industrial site, no kidding), kept warm and arrived at hospitals by trucks to be distributed. If you were not too sick when you enter the hospital, you would probably be after the very first meal you had there. I have never been a picky eater, but that was simply inedible. I lost a lot of weights in two months (ok, probably due more to my illness, but the food served there simply did not help...I would rather go hungry than eat it). Sometime they served fruit, and I thought how could you ruin the taste of fruits ? Well, you can actually (by buying the lowest quality food ? they are for patients that need to eat and get better for goodness sake.

Cognacq Jay Hospital Paris

The last two months of hospitalisation were spent in a hospital that is an association (I guess, funded by both private and government fundings). Beautiful building (designed by a Japanese architect, see photo on the left) that has nothing to do with the public hospitals where I was (one of them had crumbling windows and floors !). Food was also prepared by chefs on site and was served on real plates with nice cutlery (see photo bottom right). There was also afternoon tea with a cake everyday. I quickly regained all the weights I lost (and even more) during my stay in this hospital. On site, there is a physiotherapy room as well as art classes that are supposedly therapeutic.

In all hospitals you will find a psychologist, and a social assistant (to help you with administrative matters and more...never having spent time in hospitals in the US or Australia, I don't know if they have them there too). Despite differences in hardware of public and less public hospitals, it has to be said that the staff are equally competent in all of them. The doctors in the two public hospitals are well-known and respected specialists, and the nurses are wonderful (ok, maybe some more than others). Ditto in the semi private hospital. I have come to respect enormously the work that these health care professionals do. They work in difficult conditions (not enough staff, often horrible and long hours, sometimes inadequate facilities as in public hospitals) but they soldier on.