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Interfaith innovation

What is innovation? A difficult question but would this effort modestly fit?

The Inter-Faith Gown is a new hospital gown for patients who would like to be more modestly clothed….

The Problem

Some people may be reluctant to be admitted into hospital due to the revealing nature of traditional patient gowns.

The Solution

The Inter-Faith Gown is designed to preserve the modesty of patients whose culture or religion requires them to be more modestly clothed.

It is made up of five pieces – three head garments, a gown and trousers. These elements can be mixed-and-matched to enable the patient to obtain the required degree of coverage. The sleeves of the gown have elasticated cuffs to cover the patients’ arms.

Pictures are added in a tasteful jade green. Is this really what our taxes should be spent on?

28 comments to Interfaith innovation

  • smallwit

    Is this really what our taxes should be spent on? No, and neither is health care.

    Note the euphemism of ‘inter-faith’ when they really mean ‘muslim’. I doubt they’re going to apply the same euphemism to terrorists.

    Why don’t they do away with mixed wards?

    Andrew

  • CountingCats

    I have no problem with this idea. This is a real example of tolerance, sensitivity and consideration, as opposed to the garbage we are normally fed.

    My one reservation, nay, objection, is people in the hospitals with their faces covered. I think the NHS going along with this is loopy.

    Otherwise? Doesn’t hurt me, costs bugger all, makes someone happy, so what does it matter?

    Although labelling it ‘Inter-Faith’ is not just loopy, but a lie, and that I do object to.

  • RAB

    My one reservation, nay, objection, is people in the hospitals with their faces covered

    Now you know perfectly well the reason for this,
    and it has nothing to do with hygene

    Someone, given the woeful state of the NHS (emulate away and …Die America)
    Might get sued.

  • Debbie

    Sheesh, people have been complaining about their arse’s hanging out of those gowns for ever. Why is this NOW an issue.(rhetorical question)

  • “Why is this NOW an issue.(rhetorical question”.Because the government is frightened of those complaining now,your arse out in the workhouse was good enough for the natives

  • A gown and trousers… and three head garments.

    Everybody gets the same gown and trousers.

    So it is all to do with head garments. Is that weird or what?

    When I go, I want to go in straight-laced shoes, a box-back coat and a stetson hat – with a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch-chain, so the boys’ll know I died standing pat.

  • Quote from their website

    http://www.trustech.org.uk/about-trustech/about-trustech.htm

    Who would have guessed that the people who blong this are part of an NHS Innovation Hub?

  • Who would have guessed that the people who blong this are part of an NHS Innovation Hub?

    NHS Innovation Hub?

    AN NHS Innovation Hub?

    [runs screaming from the room]

    I suppose it could be worse: they could have joined up the words as Innovationhub….

  • Samsung

    ‘Inter-Faith Gown’ my arse… Lets stop f*ckin’ around here and get straight to it. It’s a bin-liner for the Muslim Neanderthals. Even the colour GREEN gives it away. Very PC Islamic.

  • James Waterton

    What if you’re simply a modest person (as someone said above – you don’t want your arse hanging out of the back of a traditional gown)? Or maybe you just get cold easily and prefer the extra coverage? Nothing to do with faith, so can you get access to the “interfaith gown”?

    The gown itself isn’t a bad idea. I just loathe the name – or more specifically, the thinking of those who named it thus.

  • Lets see. State controlled church? Check! State controlled health care? Check! State controlled pajamas? Of Course !

  • NHS Innovation Hub?

    AN NHS Innovation Hub?

    Ted, did you click on that link? It’s for real!

    James: a person so modest they need to cover their head and face indoors? This has nothing to do with faith?

  • James Waterton

    Alisa:

    These elements can be mixed-and-matched to enable the patient to obtain the required degree of coverage.

    I believe that a number of non-religious patients would elect to wear some parts of the “interfaith gown”. I’d probably wear the pants, for starters.

    I hate these bureaucracies that have to turn what sounds like quite a beneficial garment for many patients into a Muslim thing. Such efforts to appear inclusive (“interfaith” – gee, I wonder which faith that’s referring to) actually have quite the opposite effect on the majority of the population, who feel the pandered-to minority is getting special treatment, and are resentful as a result.

  • James, you seem to assume that this was originally conceived as a mere improvement on the existing gown, and then turned into pandering to Muslim patients. I rather tend to think that were it not for Muslim patients, this would have never come into existence. I could be wrong, of course.

    I’d also probably wear the pants:-)

  • windy blow

    I am of the true Faith, I need medical attention. I insist on it now!

    But I cannot allow infidels to operate on me in case they see my face. I will be damned forever if this happens, beaten or perhaps killed by my relatives for being so debased.

    But I demand your free medical aid now, even though I have no intention of paying my share of the bill!

    So do something at once or we get very angry indeed… and you would not like us when we get angry…

    Fuck off

  • permanentexpat

    Make no mistake, Septic Islanders; recognize a Giant Pander when you see one 8-((

  • Nick M

    If you read the link from Philip’s article you will be staggered by the convoluted route by which the NHS achieved this innovation.

    God knows what it’s like when they acquire something complicated like an MRI machine.

    It must be like elephants mating… noisy, clumsy and you have to wait two years to get any results…

    Just on a linguistic note, what precisely does “inter-faith” mean? Multi-faith, Omni-faith, yes, but inter-faith? Does it actually mean anything? I must ask my innovation-hub! I bet Barack Obama has an innovation-hub. Or possibly a Change Router.

  • Julian Taylor

    Even the colour GREEN gives it away. Very PC Islamic.

    Actually if anything my complaint would be that those colours, and the outfit, would make patients look suspiciously too much like the surgeons who are supposed to be operating on them. If they really want non-denomination colours then just opt for white clothing with NHS in large black letters – that way the police also know who to drag back screaming into A&E.

  • freeman too

    Julain Taylor votes for white rather than green. I think orange is good.

  • ian

    Mine were orange but that was in Bath not Cuba…

  • MDC

    What really is wrong with this? I understand why people object to state healthcare in general (an objection I share), but if people want to believe that an invisible man will torture them in the afterlife if they don’t cover their face, what on earth is wrong with allowing them to cover their face?

  • freeman too

    “what on earth is wrong with allowing them to cover their face?”

    What on earth is wrong with allowing them to uncover their face from time to time when it helps the society they have joined?

  • MDC: I obviously don’t think that people should not be allowed to cover heir face in public, but personally there are so many things wrong with this, I would not know where to begin. And to think I used to be annoyed with people who carry a conversation with sunglasses on.

  • MDC

    “What on earth is wrong with allowing them to uncover their face from time to time when it helps the society they have joined?”

    They’re allowed to uncover their face whenever they want to – this is for when they don’t want to. I mean… this is a libertarian blog, right? I agree with you lot that Islam’s restrictions are irrational, but it’s a religion, of course it’s irrational – that doesn’t mean it should be banned.

  • Pa Annoyed

    MDC,

    We’re not questioning whether people should be allowed to cover their faces, we’re questioning whether we the taxpayers should be made to pay for it.

    There are, actually, a few reasons why it is a bad idea. When sick patients need to be monitored, you need to be able to see them (like, if their lips turn blue, it’s a bad sign). And when talking to a patient you get a lot of information from non-verbal cues.

    But the objection here is to there being a special deal for Muslims, just because they make the most noise. Suppose I have a thing about wearing green – it doesn’t have to be rational, I just hate it. So can I have some yellow gowns? Can I make the NHS order them specially? No, I don’t want yellow ones either, because it’s a Tuesday, can I have a red one? And I don’t like the food – can I have something else? And the bed is too small – my religion demands I have a big bed. And comfy cushions. And some nice religious music – chants and stuff – played very loud. For the midnight service.

    You see, if you go private you can have want you want, within reason. You’re the one paying for it, see? But on the NHS, their basic remit is to stop you dying. Anything else is gravy.

    It’s the fact that religions, and one religion in particular, get special treatment when it comes to having their irrational demands pandered to that gets up other people’s noses. There are people being refused treatment, sometimes for really serious conditions, because the NHS supposedly doesn’t have the money. And yet they’re spending that money on making sure shy people don’t accidentally expose their ankles?

  • Samsung

    “And yet they’re spending that money on making sure shy people don’t accidentally expose their ankles?”

    It’s not so much ‘shyness’ that’s the issue here, it’s more to do with blatent repressive and intolerant religious misogynism. If these ignorant and unelightened people want to dress their women up in seventh century desert garb, then OUR government with OUR hard earnt monies (taxation) should NOT be appeasing and entertaining these bloody Neanderthals. Emily Pankhurst would be turning over in her grave if she knew. All that hard work striving for emancipation (liberation from religious, legal, economic, and sexual oppression) of women within our society to end with this BULLSHIT. It’s like taking two steps forward and three steps backward. If you come to this country, then try to assimulate into the greater society and adopt important aspects of our freedoms and liberties, or f*ck off back to the Dar Al-Islam. Christ almighty, they’ll be doing Islamic Female Circumcisions on the NHS next. Anything in the name of “multiculturalism”.

  • MDC

    Pa Annoyed, it is within the remit of providing healthcare to try to make people comfortable, and to stop people avoiding using the service because of religious modesty. Samsung believes that because “society” disapproves, peoples’ personal choices should be disallowed… that is a totalitarian collectivist argument that runs contrary to the vast majority of what is posted on this blog.

    And yes, we all think these things should be privatised, but that’s a different – and private hospitals would probably provide these anyway to muslim customers.

    Islam has a great many problems but bashing some irrelevant and, frankly, inoffensive side issue in a manner inconsistant with one’s overall philosophy is not a valid response.

  • Pa Annoyed

    MDC,

    I don’t mind them making people comfortable where reasonable, and if they made a similar effort for everyone else, I wouldn’t argue. But the issue is significant because they make it so. The point is that when anybody else asks for something, they mostly get ignored, but when Muslims ask for it, they often get it in the name of something called “interfaith”. At the least, the request is taken more seriously. It doesn’t matter that, for the moment, much of what they ask for is trivia. Their aim is to keep pushing at the boundaries until conceding becomes automatic. To get it accepted, to make it normal, for the Westerner to change their ways to integrate with those of Muslims. It’s a purely symbolic victory, but symbols matter. It sends the message that Muslim ways are to be respected, are part of the established order, have official endorsement – so that if any women or potential apostates get uppity and step out of line, or anyone opposes them politically, they’ll already be at least partly convinced they’ll get no sympathy from the British.

    No, religious dress as such doesn’t matter – any more than insisting on wearing Swastika armbands or Satanist serial killer decorated T-shirts would. And if they want to buy and bring their own (which you can do), I’ve got absolutely no objection. I might not like what they wear, but it’s their right.

    It’s not what the NHS have done in particular, but simply the fact they’ve given in once again, and shown everyone that Muslims get privileges nobody else does, and with taxpayers’ money too.

    People have moaned about hospital gowns pretty much since they were first introduced – I remember jokes about them in films and on TV thirty years ago. That they’ve fixed the problem is actually a good thing (assuming the rest of us are allowed to ask for them too, of course). That they only did so when Muslims complained, and not when Brits did, is not.