When you go to see a doctor at 8:30, you may end up being served at 9:00. It may seem like a small delay, but it goes to show how clumsy some healthcare services can be.
The frustrating part is that you often have no control over it. You sit on the chair wondering why you came early in the first place. Yet there is not much you can do about it.
Over time, you become accustomed to this kind of routine. You know you will probably wait, so you simply sit there and accept it.
And perhaps that is where the real problem lies. We have become so accustomed to poor service that waiting, delays and inefficiency no longer surprise us. They have become part of the healthcare experience.
That is what can happen even in a private hospital. If we were to compare this with public hospitals, the situation can be worse.
Take, for example, the recent strike by nurses that ended after 41 days. There were concerns about the lack of engagement with the nurses by county governments, yet nurses are central to the functioning of most public hospitals.
Before that, doctors had been on strike for a long time. Generally, there have been periods when one group or another has been on strike, leaving patients caught in the middle.
And the common person who is affected by this can’t do much. All they can say is, “There are no doctors.”
That patient who had booked a surgery cannot get it done. It is either postponed or they have to look for the service somewhere else.
The cycle of inefficiencies in public hospitals just goes round and round. If doctors are not on strike, it is either clinical officers or nurses. Sometimes SHA is not working. Sometimes the pharmacy does not have the medicines.
And even when you get better service in a hospital today, you are not guaranteed to experience the same the next time you visit the same facility.
This is part of the reason we have seen so many community pharmacies opening. At least there is somewhere people can run to for basic healthcare services.
Many minor ailments can be handled by pharmacy professionals at the pharmacy level without necessarily having to spend hours in a public facility for something that could have been managed much earlier.
But there is another problem. Not everyone can afford to buy medicines from community pharmacies, which can sometimes be more expensive.
And this is where the consequences become more serious.
A patient may stay with a condition for much longer than necessary because they cannot afford the medicine or cannot access the service they need. A condition that could have been picked up early and managed easily can become something much more complicated.
So perhaps the real issue is not that we waited 30 minutes to see a doctor.
The real issue is that we have normalised a healthcare system where the patient is expected to adjust to the system, rather than the system adjusting to the needs of the patient.
We have become accustomed to waiting. We have become accustomed to shortages. We have become accustomed to strikes. We have become accustomed to being told that the doctor is not available, the medicine is out of stock, the system is down, or the service will have to wait.
But the patient cannot always wait.
Sometimes the condition gets worse.
Sometimes the opportunity for early intervention is lost.
And sometimes, what started as a small problem becomes a much bigger one simply because the healthcare system was not there when the patient needed it.
That is why improving healthcare is not only about building more hospitals or having more healthcare professionals.
It is also about building a system that is reliable, accessible and consistent enough for the patient to know that when they need help, they can actually get it.
