Ever since i stepped into medical life as being a medical students, i had received or heard lots of complaints regarding the bad attitude and services of the doctors in government hospitals. At that time, i only heard from one side which were the complaints from the patients or those in concern.Seriously, before i started my job, I kept my finger cross so that i wont repeat their mistakes after i become a doctor.
However, starting from the day i become a hseman, i start to realise there are 2 sides of the stories. As i am in the doctor's shoe, i realise that everything is not under my control. As i was in charged in the clinic, i started seeing patients. However, i was not a qualified doctor yet. So, a lot of consultations from the medical officer were needed. And to look at a clear view of the scenario, actually in the clinic, there were 8 hseman in charge and 2-3 medical officers with 1-2 specialist. So, hseman job is to make sure the patient's history clear enough and to find out his or her current condition besides identifiying the pathology in the patients. To reconfirm it, we need to consult the medical officers for 2nd opinion and definite decisions. Base on their experiences, they will make the right call. And with limited MO's and specialist and tonnes of patient waiting outside, what we need to do to prevent patient from waiting long are to act fast, manage fast and then to attend the patient ASAP to prevent patient from waiting too long.
However , the complaints that i heard were listed as below.....
1. the doctors are busy writing and lack of explaining.
2. the doctors see patient for less than 5 minutes with lack of concern
and the list goes on...
However, if they can think it in our shoes, in a government hospital with lots of patients in queue, its impossible to keep the patient stagnant inside the clinic till late in the evening. We need to be fair to everybody.Patients also need to work. They cant take leave for whole day just for a clinic visit.There are lots of things we need to consider. We need to act fast and the process of double consultations plus for a precise management already taken some time. So, its impossible to entertain patient for so long and besides filling up their follow up cards for a clearer view with precise diagnosis during next visit and also for medicolegal purposes. So, the so called lack of concern comes in.. The true hard facts are that the Medical officers and the housemans are actually handling ward cases and also clinic cases at the same time. Sometimes, we need to keep ourselves in hunger until the clinics finish and at times, there are also ward cases that need to be settled that make us starve until the evening. If anybody could understand this... there will be mutual undertandings between everyone and no more complaining and frictions will happen.
I am not defending for the doctors .. but standing as the medical personalle view.. i could only say that its not that we are lack of empathy or care, its out of our control whereby there are lots of patient ( approx. 150 patient per day ) in ratio of the doctors amount. So, there will be some messy conditions happen. Hopefully by these clear cut of explainations, ppl will start to view things at different angle as there are reasons behind each issues.
That's the problem when working at government hospital. Not only in Malaysia but also experienced the same issues in other countries. There are too few doctors to attend to too many patients. Apart from that and more often than criticisms bound to occur over there. Why not? Too many people seeking cheap/free treatment and contribute nothing but to complain. They should go 'private' hahaha. Pay high medical consultation fee at private hospital like and shut up. :-)
ReplyDeleteEmpathy...definitely you don't lack that virtue. It's of course important to develope this virue, the quality of empathy for all. I believe in social groups and in business entities it is imperative and would be of great advantage if all begin to look at this and to understand how empathy can change the life of a person and of everyone this person comes in contact with. I dare say that an empathetic person enjoys a much more higher quality of life such as more calm, patient, fair, has more in-depth understanding of what another person is going through, is willing to share and has no desire to hurt anyone or to gain anything for selfish needs at anyone else expense. So if everyone has this virtue, need I say more? Food for thought...:-D
I remember what my ex-boss told me shortly after she joined the company.
ReplyDelete"I don't care how many toes I have to step, as long as I get the things I want done."
Is that empathy? I believe not. But she was barely 40 and sat in the position of financial controller.
Sometimes it's a balance. To empathize or not. If we did, we might have to put other things on the other side of the balance which we have to sacrifice.
The balancing is ongoing. =) That's what i found out in my 3 decades around.