You would have read that European ministers travelling in train with co passengers, resigning for getting late and be down to earth in whatever they do and got sick of comparing them with what is going on in India. It is anybody’s experience that in our country being a normal average citizen is a curse. You need to be a VIP to get things done and keep up time with any chores you want to do. I am sure you might have experienced waiting for getting things done with government/private offices. It is surprising that well educated, well paid and highly informed people lack empathy and do not have any guilty feelings in making others waiting for them.
There’s nothing worse than showing up on time for a doctor’s appointment and then having to wait because of multiple reasons. The agony can be seen in the faces of patients with children, elderly patients, office goers who got permissions for limited time, patients from far of places and all. You can imagine what sort of thinking process will be going on in their mind. I am sure most of you would have experienced such delay more than once. Some of the reasons are listed below:
Doctor is late (for reasons known to him only), doctor just started Op due to unexpected emergency; doctor was late from a surgery/rounds in the hospital which took more time. Too many ‘report showing patients’ turned up (who need not have appointment); doctor was absent for more than a week due to his family function/foreign trip, etc. There are still many more.
There is a doctor who gives appointment from 10 am to 1 pm, but the norm is all patients should report by 9.30 am and they will be served on first come first serve basis. Interesting point is this doctor comes only around 11 am. In case if the first patient is not the first come, chances are he may be waiting to see doctor for 2 to 3 hours easily.
I always wonder why doctors don’t give any damn respect for the feelings of the waiting patient, why doctors are not bothered about word of mouth ill publicity which for sure will happen. I feel it is high time doctors and their assistants undergo some sort of soft skill training on topics like Time management, Empathy, Customer service and the patients on Emotional intelligence!
Besides switching doctors, there are other ways to respond to a long wait. My suggestion: ask for a discount of some sort for every 15 minutes delay coupled with a penalty clause of higher fee for those patients who are reporting late.
Another option is to post reviews with happy comments on your doctor for timely honouring appointments on social media. In the interest of avoiding deterioration of both doctor and patient’s health, this issue needs to be, and with technology, can easily be addressed provided there is a will.
