TV is an essential comfort for isolated hospital patients – so why are they still being charged to watch it?

Home comforts like TV can have a significant impact on a patient’s wellbeing, pain management and recovery rate

Throughout this crisis, I’ve been supporting the families of hospitalised coronavirus patients. One of the hardest aspects of my conversations with these relatives is hospitals’ visitor restrictions; at present, most visits are prohibited. This has left patients feeling extremely isolated.

Although video and phone calls can assuage this loneliness, they are not the same as someone’s physical presence; once the call has finished, the loneliness descends again. Meanwhile, hospital staff do not have the time they would like to converse with recuperating patients, as they are battling to save critically ill patients.

One of the primary ways in which hospital patients seek solace is through entertainment: TV, films, video games. It therefore seems absurd that patients are often charged (often £8 or more a day) to watch TV in hospital, when this should be considered an integral part of their treatment. Patients are already being exploited through parking fees, hospital shops and bedside phones.

One of my constituents, Mohammed Afjal Ali, is a senior critical care technologist. It’s his job to ensure specialist equipment used to care for the critically ill is safe and effective. “Having worked in critical care for over six years,” Ali told me, “I have seen first-hand the difference that entertainment systems can make to patients’ emotional and physical wellbeing. Patients need to have free entertainment to lift their spirits and give them something to focus on while confined to a hospital bed; I believe the impact on their morale will shorten their hospital stay.”

Many people perceive hospitals as depressing environments. It is understandable, then, how a prolonged stay in one can affect a patient’s mental health, particularly when you are already feeling unwell. No amount of medical care can compensate for not being in familiar surroundings. Therefore, home comforts like TV can have a significant impact on a patient’s wellbeing, pain management and recovery rate.

I’m therefore calling on media corporations – Netflix, Amazon, Sky, Virgin – to play their role in the coronavirus effort by providing their services to NHS patients free of charge.

As the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Newby says: “NHS staff have proved, as always, brilliant at dealing with patients’ medical condition, but to make a full recovery people also need to be mentally as strong as possible. Isn’t it time that the media and television companies played their part in supporting patients to access content that can aid their emotional and mental wellbeing?”

Rabina Khan is a Liberal Democrat councillor in Shadwell, London