Hospital Comedy

Sometimes Wurly and I will be in the middle of a 'China experience' and we'll look at each other and someone will say "there's a good blog story coming out of this!" We have both now had experience of the Chinese health care system with me taking a trip to the accident and emergency ward the other night and Wurly dealing with his post-China-Southern food poisoning a few weeks ago. We are both in fine health but the trip to A&E is definately worth a post!

Firstly, there is no sense of confidentiality in Chinese hospitals. As we walked in, people are laying about the place on drips...it's all very public. Being the only foreigners in there we of course drew stares which is really not what you're after when you're in A&E...or ever. The doctor then started telling me about all the other people from my school that he treats - no idea that those people probably don't want me hearing about their medical histories.

After my consultation, the doctor decided that I should take either tablets A or injection B. I went for the tablets. Then he came back in and said 'oh, we don't have those tablets'. As it turned out, they had the tablets, but they were in the 'other' pharmacy room to which nobody had the key. Right. So I went for injection B. The process here is: go to counter 1, pay money, stand around until someone tells you to go over there to counter 2 where they give you the little vial in a paper bag. Then go find someone who's qualified to stick a needle in you.

While we were waiting we saw nurses putting drips in babies...in their HEADS. I also watched the nurse prepare my injection with no gloves on. Then we went into the room to get the shot, which was given again with no gloves. Wurly noticed the floor was littered with discarded sharps. After the nurse did the injection she left and we sat there for a while until we realised we were probably supposed to leave. So we did.

On the up side, the injection cost me 1.7 Yuan (about 28 cents). The next day I went to an American clinic in Shanghai for a second opinion and they gave me the same injection for 110 Yuan (about 18 dollars). Still, if I have to pay 17 extra dollars for gloves and a clean clinic...seems like a bargain to me.