Opinion | Amid pain and sometimes fury, China’s mega hospitals need to get back to basics
- Crowds, noise, frustration and hostility are the reality in the country’s health care institutions
- No system is healthy if doctors and patients are unhappy
Hospitals are not supposed to be violent. As places to relieve pain and cure diseases, they should be quiet, calm and comforting. In China’s mega public hospitals, however, I feel they are filled with crowds, noise, frustration, and sometimes, hostility.
Recently, I had to spend some time in a public hospital in Beijing, going through surgery to correct broken bones.
It all started at 4am waiting outside the hospital to get a number to see a specialist, only to find myself in a queue of hundreds of people. So I spent 300 yuan (US$43.20), triple the standard price of an appointment, to buy a number from a scalper. Technically, it was illegal, but the scalper said I was one of the lucky ones.
Indeed, after two hours of waiting outside the specialist’s office, I was grateful to see him. His room was crammed with patients and their relatives, too many of them. When it was finally my turn, we had five minutes together during which he confirmed surgery would be necessary. I was admitted into hospital after making some calls to friends who used their connections to get me a bed. This is a challenge when there are more patients waiting than available beds.
The doctors crowdsourcing public’s help to solve medical problems
Lying on a rock-hard hospital bed, it would be more than 40 hours before I was operated on. I was given no food or water. Just before my scheduled operation, someone did not wake up from the anaesthetic so everything was delayed. As I starved, staring at the ceiling, I could hear people shouting and crying in the corridor.
I did not see my specialist again, nor did I know what was planned for the surgery. All the doctors and nurses seemed too busy to explain. It was almost a relief when I was pushed into the operating theatre.
