Doctors need to get right bedside manner

Doctors need to get right bedside manner

Indonesians spend a whopping US$300 million on overseas medical
services each year, an official of the Ministry of Health
announced earlier this week.

I dare say I understand some of the reasons.

Several months ago in Melbourne, an Australian friend of mine
was hospitalized for minor surgery. When I casually asked her
during a visit how she found the service, she replied that it was
remiss in many aspects and, being an experienced qualified nurse,
she knew what she was talking about.

The last time I was in hospital was some 20 years ago, so I
could only remember the whole experience vaguely, and was unable
to say whether the condition had been any worse or better than in
my friend's hospital. Nonetheless, I recalled thinking that the
hospital service had been generally good, and the medical team
courteous.

The doctors and the nurses, before doing anything to me, had
walked me through it first, then had made sure I had no more
questions.

I only nodded as my friend explained the shortcomings in the
service, which in all honesty I would have easily overlooked.

The next time I visited her, she was filling out a
questionnaire from the hospital management. To my astonishment,
she did not pull her punches in expressing her dissatisfaction.

"But you're still here. Aren't you afraid they'll now ignore
you, punishing you for criticizing them?" I asked.

"Why should they?" she said, surprised at my question. "As a
private hospital, they should be grateful for my constructive
criticism, pointing them in the right direction to improvement."

I was not convinced. My concern for her welfare brought me
back the following afternoon. To my even greater astonishment, I
found her talking to the doctor she had complained about. The
doctor was explaining himself and apologizing for causing her
grief.

And during the rest of her stay, all her other complaints were
attended to.

All this came back to me when I visited my brother, then very
ill, in one of Jakarta's supposedly best private hospitals.

I was amazed to see how off-hand the medical consultants were,
not only to their patients, but also to the patients' families.

Yet, except for my sister-in-law, who knew the reasons behind
my consternation, the family members of most patients I talked to
did not find it strange that if they wanted to have some of their
queries answered, they had to conduct a "doorstop interview" with
a medical consultant, after stalking the said consultant for some
time.

They found it normal that the consultants, being so much in
demand, should only grant them brief audiences.

Then when I was fortunate enough to talk to my brother's
medical consultants, I had the impression that I was holding them
up from doing something very important, and that they were
extending a great favor by deigning to speak to me.

I assumed that the high costs of hospitalization in Australia
made the medical practitioners in its hospitals able to afford
more personal and better service to their patients compared to
Jakarta. I was therefore flabbergasted when told of the costs of
the medical and hospital treatment of my late brother. They were
not much less than those in Australian hospitals.

There seems to be no correlation between the costs and the
quality of medical service here. The discrepancy, I suspect, lies
in social attitudes and expectations. The perception of doctors
as those who have the power to save people's lives, as well as
the capacity to amass great wealth, brings a certain degree of
disproportionate adulation and awe from the public, which many
doctors take for granted.

Unfortunately, few of them show awareness that the patients
and their families are entitled to their respect as well. The
Hippocratic oath, as I understand it, does not automatically
extend prestige and higher social standing, but extracts a solemn
promise from doctors to do their utmost to save lives.

Unless medical practitioners in this country take time to
ponder this fact and review their practices, it's little wonder
that increasing numbers of people who can afford private medical
and hospitalization go overseas for that purpose. After all, the
costs are not much higher than those at home -- and they get the
service they know they deserve.

-- Dewi Anggraeni