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Took leave today, primarily for a follow up appointment after the medical check up, to consult a specialist (nephrologist) on some kidney related indicators.
Learned a new word: nephrology - the branch of medicine that deals with the function and diseases of the kidneys.
Anyway, my appointment was 10:40 hours, I was just thinking that's rather specific, else it would probably be something like 10:30 hours. But since I was told I would need to self-register using kiosk prior to the appointment, I reached the hospital at 10:10 hours so I have ample time to do this, something that I am not familiar with.
Okay, the kiosk information is not very clear, I got a ticket with a number and on the ticket it listed two next stations: (1) registration counter; (2) clinic. So I waited at the registration area wondering why asked us to self-register if we need to approach the registration counter anyway?
After a few minutes with my number not being called while others who came after me were being called, I went ahead and asked a helper around the kiosk what I should do after the self-registration? He told me I should go to the clinic and hand over the ticket to the nurse at the clinic counter.
Well, maybe I am just too thick to understand the instruction on the ticket, they should make the information on the ticket foolproof because there might well be other people like me.
I got to the clinic and handed over my ticket, and typically, they asked me to be seated and wait to be called. It's like a ritual they have to follow even though the nurses were not doing anything other than chatting with each other.
Fine, maybe they needed to pull up my medical history, key in some information, print some stuff, or something that needs many long minutes. I went prepared anyway, I took a seat, took out my novel and started reading to pass time. The nurse called me after a while to take my weight and blood pressure.
What I wasn't prepared though, was that at 10:35 hours, the door to the nephrologist I was there to see opened, the nephrologist came out of the room, there was no one else in the room, meaning the nephrologist wasn't seeing any patient, and he told the nurses that he was going to the ward then.
WTF? If you are going to do your ward round at that time period, why do you schedule my appointment at that time? And not just mine, because more and more patients came after he left. Granted, not all those patients were there to see him, some, the lucky ones, were there to see the female doctor next door to him, and that female doctor was seeing her patients one after another at that time period so all good and well for them.
Not so lucky for the rest of us under that male nephrologist, our times meant nothing to him it seems, scheduling us at his ward round time, just for us to wait. Meaningless waste of time.
I asked the nurse how long do I have to wait, how long usually is the nephrologist's ward round? I was told it's usually about 30 minutes. Fine, I can live with that.
Only it's not 30 minutes, at least it wasn't today, the nephrologist returned from his ward round at 11:55 hours, 1 hour and 15 minutes after my scheduled appointment. There was another patient before me, it was quick though, I was finally called to see the doctor at 11:59 hours.
No thank you for wasting my time like this. Why bother with the appointment system if you were not going to adhere to it anyway? Is it a doctor's thing to not respect other people's time? We have better things to do as well, you know?
Well, to be fair it's not the appointment system that's broken, as the female doctor shows. It's the person choosing not to follow it that made it useless and meaningless.
Other |runaway rants| category entries.
