Education En Masse

Where there’s a will there’s a way. People need to learn how to correctly utilise health services. If only this blog had mass appeal.

Generally speaking we all have a “want it now” attitude. As in I’m sick now and want it fixed now. Anyone who has had the flu, for example, will know you can be sick for a full week, perhaps more. There is rarely such a thing as an immediate fix.

Some learn the hard way by having to wait in a boring, drafty, uncomfortable hospital waiting room for 5 hours or more before getting a bed, or told to go home and rest.

People want to see a doctor straight away and think that coming in by ambulance will achieve that. Truth is that a cardiac chest pain by own transport will always beat the vomiting on an ambulance stretcher.

One man recently thought that he would get immediate treatment and attention from a doctor when he arrived via ambulance. When ushered to the waiting room, with his minor bout of vomiting, he complained to the clerk then the nursing manager. He got his marching orders by security for being abusive to staff.

Unless you are in a really bad way (i.e. life threatening) then you will have to wait for a doctor. The doctor/patient ratio is nowhere near 1:1.

Most of the time for those with minor ailments it would be quicker and better for them to take some rest and see their GP in the morning. But for some reason people are too quick to get worked up over these minor ailments and then the act of getting worked up becomes the ailment.

If people just took a reality check and considered their condition against all the other people in hospital then perhaps our health system would work a bit better. Or perhaps our health is set up perfectly for the results it is getting.