Hospital Nightmare

Hospitals in Madrid, especially public ones, as far as my experience concerns, are desperately competing at full throttle with the Spanish banking system to get a Champion Cup of Administrative Sluggishness and Ineffectiveness.

And obviously they're going to win the race very soon.

My painful experience of Appendicitis taught me that even in a private hospital, you must not get your hope too high of receiving a prompt and rapid emergency service from the staff, let alone the doctors' gentleness to the suffering patients. (See Operación Triunfo in the old archives).

My other literally irritating experience of Urticaria gave me a formula for the time a public hospital takes to attend a patient; double or multiply by three the total time you stay in a queue in a private hospital to see a doctor, and that's the time you have to spend in a public one waiting for your turn. (See Life is a Roller Coaster).

The administration disaster is even more noticeable in the Emergency Units. Takeshi, my japanese friend, who had a not-so-complicated intestinal hemorrhage was admitted in a public hospital's EU and stayed there a couple of days. In the second visit I couldn't find him, so I asked the Information for his room and was told to go to the counter on the right. And so I went, but it was closed, I had to wait until the nurses came (which was very late, and I was worried because the visit time only lasted 30 minutes or so). After rummaging through papers and reports, a kind nurse told me she had no idea where my friend was!!! None of the activities concerning him were registered in the reports, nor in the computer! What an unbelievable excuse! Finally, the problem was solved when she called the EU, which took quite some time (seemed like the EU had troubles finding out what had happened as well), and informed me that Takeshi was set to freedom (at last!) since the morning. Lucky him, being able to get away from such nightmare so early, since the condition in the room was depressing; 30 patients or so filled the room, high temperature, no windows, no clock and small corridor.

Nevertheless, some medical centers have their merits. Recently (and also today), I have undergone a series of Periodontitis Treatment (Examination, oral cleansing and curretage) in a private dental clinic that belongs to my Health Insurance company. I left with good impression, to say the least. They arranged things quickly in a well-organized manner, and were able to bring forward one of my appointments and gave me useful advices, always with smile, of course. This is the quality I have always dreamed of (which is not rare to find one at all in Bangkok).

Until next time, when you go to a hospital, bring a book with you, relax and smile because you never know how long you'll have to wait.