Clouded judgement about Mandeville Regional Hospital?
Published:Wednesday | December 12, 2018 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
Things appear to us the way we look at them. Our impressions and conclusions are clouded or influenced by our experiences, knowledge or expertise and expectations.
Byron Wilson in the Gleaner’s ‘Letter of The Day’ published on Friday, December 7 demonstrated absurdity and irrationality in his critical and derogatory comments about Mandeville Regional Hospital.
In his initial critical comments he mentioned that the place smelled like a hospital. Ouch! If a farm should smell like a farm and a restaurant like a restaurant then it is quite reasonable to any rational mind that a hospital would smell like a hospital. Did Byron Wilson expect Mandeville Hospital to smell like a bakery or bauxite refinery? Absolutely absurd!
He seemed quite incensed when he commented on the state of the bathrooms and apparently this anger either further clouded his judgement or he was displaying more ignorance. Fact is the state of public bathrooms is usually more a reflection of the people who are using them than the diligence of those assigned to their upkeep.
I have observed in conference centres, hotels and restaurants, very clean bathrooms transformed into messy places in a very short while. And with hundreds of persons visiting the Mandeville Regional Hospital daily, even with the best efforts of the janitors there are times the bathrooms can become unsightly because it needs only a few persons to mess them up.
There is always room for improvement in the maintenance of and quality of service offered at our public institutions and critical comments should be welcomed and used for general improvement. However, when someone has clearly demonstrated that he is irrational regarding even very basic matters; to what extent, if any at all, should we give due consideration to his impressions and conclusions regarding far more complex matters? Readers can decide.
I am, etc.
Daive R Facey