Speed Breakers in Hospital

The heritage building of the hospital had been extended some time after the first part was built. For some curious reason they had built it at a higher level. Perhaps the ground was a little higher there, and it was easier to build it higher than to dig the ground to make it level. They had to put slopes to connect the two parts of the building, on which the patients could be wheeled to and fro. When the architect repaired the extended wing of the building, he repaired the slope too. In order to prevent people from slipping on the slope, he fitted it with parallel strips of tiles embedded obliquely. The central one foot wide longitudinal strip was left smooth for the trolley puller to walk on. It looked terrific, but the effect was not that terrific. "Sir, the slope is not good for shifting patients on a trolley" our OT attandant told me. "There are too many vibrations. and the person who pulls the trolley slips over the central smooth portion. A woman attendant slipped over it yesterday, hit her head over the edge of one of the tiles and hurt herself." "Let us go see it" I said. "Bring along a trolley with a box of stuff on it." He put three boxes of intravenous fluids on top of the trolley in a row, to act as a dummy for a patient. Then another attendant and he pulled the trolley up the slope and then down the slope again. On each edge of the tiles, the boxes jumped violently. It was like driving over a speed breaker made by embedding multiple pipes in parallel on the road. "An endotracheal tube inside a patient will get dislodged if we move the patient over this" the attendant said. "Stitches of an operated patient may break while moving her to the postoperative ward" the other attendant said. So I contacted the architect and the contractor. They agreed to grind the edges. They did that, but the work was not enough. It was still a speed-breaker. Perhaps they thought helpfully that they ccould slow down the journey of critically ill patients to heaven or hell by making them pass over the speed breakers.