25 March 2007
The classic story
Last Tuesday, Mrs. Dang, my neighbour, asked me if I can accompany her to the provincial hospital. I said yes. Dang is Jan's aunt. This girl 'Jan (Psudonym)' is 15 years old, she was suffering by the rash on her limbs, face, knees and she also has pain on her sholders. Jan met a Gen. Med. doctor at a private hospital in the city last few months. Doctor told her that, she's got DLE (Discoid Lupus Erythematosus) and refered her to get the medicine at community hospital near her home. Jan kept having medicine from community hospital for two months. She feels that her symptom is not getting better. Moreover, she wants to move to Bangkok to stay with her mother and for her senior highschool study. Her aunt asked me if I could to drive them to the provincial public hospital to meet that Gen Med doctor (he works with two hospitals, office hours in public hospital and after hours in private hospital).
We arrived the hospital at 9.00, hundreds of patients were there at that time. First we contacted the reception to check if Jan's health care card is OK to have a free treatment here. The reception requested a copy of her document, luckily her aunt knew and did it before we arrived (if not, maybe we needed an hour more just to walk to make a photocopy and back to the queue again!). Then we walked to the Gen Med department, know nothing, only the magic words 'just wait here' at that time more than a hundred of patients were waiting there. No doctors are there until 10.00. Dang told me that they spent their time working for private hospital in the early moning. We waited patiently until 12.00, a nurse told us that doctor would have a lunch break until 1.00 pm. However, our Gen Med doctor went back and started his work again at 1.30 pm. We finally met him at 2.30 pm. He could remembered Jan and had a brief talk to her, the clinical diagonsis took less than 10 minutes to finish. He confirmed that Jan should continue using the same medication and made an appoint for DSE antibody blood check on next month. He prescribed the same pills.
In conclusion, we wait 5 hours in order to have the same medication. (at least we don't have to pay for the pills and doctor fee). I'm not surprised for what happened to Jan. This is the classic story that happen again and again in Thai public health service including in Dental health service.
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