It can be hugely frustrating to be shuffled around when you’re ill, injured, or recovering from a medical procedure. My friend learned this first-hand following a recent surgery.
After the procedure, her surgeon and nurse gave her instructions for a follow-up appointment. She would also need to book an appointment to have her sutures removed. She was given a piece of paper with the relevant numbers to call.
Once she’d healed the allotted amount of time, she called the numbers as instructed. Each clinic directed her to call a different number, and she was transferred from one person to another. After being on the phone for a good hour, she was told to simply call her regular physician. To make matters worse, the receptionists kept acting as though she had the wrong information and wasn’t following the instructions even though she was doing exactly what her surgeon had told her to do.
Clearly there was a lack of communication at some point, and patients like my friend suffer because of it. Think of the times you’ve gone to the pharmacy, only to find your doctor didn’t call in the prescription, or when a procedure has been bumped at the last minute. When people are in poor health, something like that can be a big setback. I can only hope that things improve—and that healthcare professionals do their best to fix mistakes quickly and politely.