We spent 3 hours waiting for Aliyah to see the doctor at Serdang Hospital on Friday afternoon. It was such a long wait. But it was expected. After all, it's a Government hospital. I ni kan consultant. While other people sat talking, staring at the wall, fiddling their phones, reading papers, watching TV... I watched how the system works. Why is the service so slow? Here are my observations:
1) During initial registration, patients were "filtered" - those who need immediate treatment were asked to wait at the reception area. Service here was quite fast. We sat for less than 10 minutes and Aliyah got called. She had her temperature and blood sample taken by a nurse. Then only we were asked to register to the next level to see the doctor. Note: Later, the doctor won't have to take temperature and blood sample anymore. Save time (or not!).
2) Patients at Jabatan Kecemasan were put into several categories. Emergency cases will be treated at the red and yellow rooms (kritikal dan separa kritikal). The ones ushered to see the doctors were those who can wait to be treated.
3) At any one time, there were at least 20 patients waiting to see the doctor. The place looked packed because their families or friends tag along. "Families and friends tag along" -> remember this.
4) There are 5 consultation rooms. That Friday afternoon, four rooms were occupied. Meaning there were 4 doctors plus a host of nurses and assistants. Logically, this would mean service will be fast.
5) Here, there were 3 categories of patients waiting. I seriously don't know how they categorise them. All I could see was that there were numbers ie 1xxx, 2xxx and 3xxx. Aliyah was 2047. When we registered, the current number being served was 2037. Only 10 people ahead of us. So, how did we ended up waiting for 3 hours?
6) Apparently, the patients were called based on critical level. There were quite a lot of 1xxx being called, less 2xxx and 3xxx. Ok, that is acceptable and understandable.
7) Now, here's what I observed that I believe made the service become slow or disrupted.
a) There were a few patients who went in to see the doctor, spent around 10 minutes in there, then went out. Outside, the person would go back to his/her family or friend, talk and then both would go back inside to see the doctor. Meanwhile, a new number has been called. Now, there are 2 patients seeing the doctor.
My guess is the doctor would have to stop his/her consultation with the new patient and entertain the 2 persons who just came in. And my guess is the doctor would have to repeat whatever he/she consulted the patient again. Maybe tell them the next course of action, which surely has been told just now.
* during that 3 hours, I counted at least 15 patients who did this. If the patient can't make decision on his/her own or maybe can't understand or I don't know, for some other strange reasons, why la didn't bring that family member or friend together in the first place rather than coming out with confused face and then go back in. Imagine 15 of such instances, one patient took an extra 5 minutes, equals to 75 minutes of wasted time.
b) There were a few patients being taken by someone of "authority". I saw a few foreigners being brought by maybe their HR officer. This "officer" would never sit with the rest. He would straight away go to one consultation room, signal his workers to follow. They would be in there for a few minutes, then they would come out. They would then go somewhere, I assume to the reception in front. Then, they would come back, straight away go to another consultation room. After a few minutes, they would come out. This process repeated itself 2-3 times, with at least 2 different "officers". I was puzzled. But then, an hour later, their number was up and they went in to see the doctor at the actual appointed consultation room.
* these "officers" think they so smart they can cut queue by bringing the workers in (one with his finger in bandages) and a pile of papers, by barging in and out of consultation rooms. I counted 2 instances. Both went in and out of 4 different consultation rooms, taking about 3 minutes each. That equals to 24 minutes of wasted time.
8) Aliyah finally got called and we went in. It was a very short consultation. Just 5 minutes. But while we were there, someone came barging in to ask a question to the doctor, thus disrupted our session for a couple of minutes. But the doctor was very sweet and patient to entertain the questions.
Now you know why the service is slow. It's not the system. It's the people who are ignorant of the system that messed up the system. If those idiots didn't simply go in and out wasting so much time, the service at the hospital would be slightly faster. Perhaps, instead of waiting for 3 hours, we would have waited maybe 2 hours.
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