It is the degree to which the society reflects its concern for the human being, either worker or patient. The worker who experiences cold indifference will transfer it to the patients.
The ability of aid may be quite irrelevant when you have a captive customer whose only option is to use your services.
How To Keep It Cool In The urgency Unit Of A Hospital!
My consulting work brings me in feel with dissimilar kinds of industries, because change supervision applies to all types of businesses undergoing reorganization. Among the industries I have been closely related with is condition Care, thus I was inspired to write of a recent incident.
Last week I had the chance to feel urgency care in one of our local hospitals. I was the patient, so I got a true-life view. As I was placing a mug of steaming coffee on the table, it slipped from my hand and poured onto my leg. The follow was a very serious burn. Being alone at home at the time, I had to drive to the nearest hospital in spite of the pain.
Fortified with an ice-pack and my insurance documents, I managed to get to the hospital only to find that parking was a major challenge. Once over that hurdle, there was the problem of medical attention. Appear Nurse Ratchett – spilling out of her uniform and sitting in a highly masculine position, cigarette stuck firmly into her grimly contracted mouth; the glint in her eye clearly spelled out: “you’d best not be expecting medicine just yet sister.” After persuading her that I did need urgency medicine inspite of the fact that I was not screaming with pain (although it was well warranted), she ordered me into a room.
I had to insist on a clean sheet for the stretcher, having personally removed the dirty one, bearing the traces of former patients. Grudgingly, my request was granted. Unaided, I got onto the stretcher. By then, the medical equivalent of a three-ring circus had invaded my room. The Ring-master, an elderly doctor, in slightly ragged uniform, came to study my burn, assisted by an intern so fresh that the first aid by hand was unmistakably still sticking out of his coat pocket.
Realizing that there were too many unauthorized eyes in the room, the physician shooed them out and finished the door. Then, Dr. Fairyfingers got down to the enterprise of attending to the wound. The wound was cleaned in a way that would have brought a tear of envy to the eyes of Toms de Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition. As I lay there only half conscious from the pain, I recommend that a pain killer might be proper at that time. He asked what kind would I like. I responded that he might be more well-known with the menu. As it happened, they were obliged to go scrounging colse to the other rooms in order to find something suitable.
Armed and dangerous, Nurse Heavyhand entered with a vial of painkiller, jabbed me with a needle and in the twinkling of an eye, painfully emptied the contents of the syringe. I was now wrapped and ready to go. Could this be the end of the ordeal? Of course not, there was still the administration.
“Do you have insurance?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have your identification documents?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a photocopy of these documents?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“In the heat of the moment, I overlooked that detail.”
“We don’t have a photocopier here.”
“So sorry, had I known, I would have brought along my portable photocopier. Failing that, what should I do?”
“You can walk to the gift shop down the road, or you could leave your documents with us until tomorrow when our supervision branch will be open.”
Of course these suggestions were neither practical nor acceptable. Nothing else was. Negligence and indifference were the norm for this urgency unit.
The irony of the whole affair is that in this same hospital, one will find glaring contradictions. Basically, all to do with superficial appearance has been given more prominence than whatever to do with outpatient care. The unspoken message the outpatient receives is this: You Are At Our Mercy! You Need Us; We Don’T Need You!
Such a “customer arrogant” attitude on the part of the victualer of condition care services may have been workable during the years of war when the outpatient had puny choice. Today, however, the outpatient regularly has a choice, is best informed and is able to divulge his/her dissatisfaction to a larger sector of the citizen because the barriers restricting freedom of movement have largely disappeared.
It is not the pretty garden, or the paintings on the wall or the office full of diplomas, certificates and trophies that will win the day in the condition care industry. It is the degree to which the society reflects its concern for the human being, either worker or patient. The worker who experiences cold indifference will transfer it to the patients.
The ability of aid may be quite irrelevant when you have a captive customer whose only option is to use your services. However, such customers will be the first to blemish when there is a best alternative. The recovery grace at the moment is that there are few alternatives that are significantly best in the ability of outpatient aid offered to those who enter without extra introductions. How much longer can this go on?
It will go on for as long as the best educated and/or wealthy patients article themselves with way to satisfactory services for themselves straight through personal connections and deny accountability on the public or national level. It will also go on for as long as the large majority of patients remain ignorant of best alternatives and their exposure to risk. And, it will go on for as long as our socio-political principles views deficiencies in public services as opportunities to build and declare power-bases.
It is only when public and consumer ignorance is no longer viewed as a important reserved supply by those who have the power to educate citizen on their rights as responsible citizens; and when important reasoning and creative problem-solving become the goals of our educational system, in place of information transfer for its own sake.
Being educated is having the ability to link one kind of information with someone else in order to originate beneficial knowledge. Being a master is of no consequence, unless that master information can be related to other information to originate a new awareness or a examine for the master service. For example, when basic hygiene and public condition are taught at schools and become part of public education in the media; and when consumer behavior and marketing become part of the training that hospital administrators and doctors receive, only then will there be a body of knowledge qualified adequate to set the scene for best outpatient care for the ‘ordinary’ human being in our hospitals.
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