ON A recent trip to Tanzania, I picked up a nasty parasite from a mango I ate. After a day of high fever from blood poisoning, a friend took me to a Tanzanian clinic. A nurse cordially helped me to a waiting room with beds.
Lab techs took samples. The doctor did a careful physical exam. Within an hour, the doctor gave me my diagnosis and the drugs I needed. Cost: two hours of my time and $40. I was comfortable and well-looked after, as were other patients.
Read Also
Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
A day later, I began the flight home. More serious symptoms showed up.
I arrived in Toronto exhausted from blood loss, barely able to stand and mentally confused.
The airport staff sent me by cab to Etobicoke General Hospital emergency. I asked for a wheelchair. None were available. The waiting room was crowded, the chairs close and uncomfortable.
A 45-minute line-up waited to see the triage nurse. But I could only stand for a couple of minutes. Every time I sat down, I lost my place. In the end I could do nothing except take a cab to a hotel. I lay there for a day or so until I got enough strength to continue on to Saskatoon.
I never got close to a doctor.
Things weren’t much better in Saskatoon. I was shunted back and forth between doctor’s offices, labs and pharmacies. Ten days later, I had a diagnosis, a potentially fatal amoebic infection that can eat one’s guts, liver, lungs and brain. Potentially fatal, but thank God it turned out the Tanzanian doctor had given me the right medication.
There was some damage, but if I’d had to wait on our own system, I would have been deathly ill. It took 10 days in Canada to do what a small integrated clinic in Tanzania did in two hours.
The Romanow report on health care says that “provincial and territorial governments should take immediate action to manage wait lists more effectively by implementing centralized approaches.”
“Centralization” is code for a factory model in which the various elements in the health care process – doctors, testing equipment, lab dispensaries, pharmacies, etc. – are separated from one another and concentrated. Patients must do the integrating, running back and forth between various offices.
Most times communication between the various players is minimal, reduced to preset forms that can’t capture the complexity of a patient’s situation.
This may be good for health-care providers but it’s rotten for patients.
When one is very sick, and not accompanied by a helper, it is tough to navigate our system. It feels impersonal and daunting, especially to those whose emotions and mental capacities are impaired by illness.
Why can’t we have waiting rooms with semi-reclining chairs? Why can’t there be a hospitality person in emergency that assists people who come in, especially those without a helper?
Why can’t we have clinics like those in Tanzania and some of our rural towns, where the doctors, lab, nurses and pharmacy are all in a one-stop shop?
I used to boast to international friends about our health-care system. I won’t do that again.
Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon.
