community update

            I’ve been feeling a bit stressed lately.  I’m not really sure why.  But I’ve been having a series of headache that at times has been incapacitating.

 
            Lately, I have become really disappointed by patients/parents’ conduct in my health center.

It’s a given that my co-interns and me exchange notes and share our experiences about seeing patients at health centers.  Recently we talked about requesting lab work-ups and patient follow-up.  I commented on how I have always had difficulty in having patients to come back for a follow-up.  I eventually do see these patients at a later date and know that they turned out okay but I’d really like to see them as their diseases resolve or, heaven forbid, progress.  In general patients never come back because of the long lines and long waiting time during the scheduled consultation period.  Somehow we can’t seem to get across the importance of patient follow-up (or they just don’t really care).

E was feeling really good about her health center.  For one, all the patients she asked to come back with laboratory results came back the next day with said results.  Two, the parents do bring their children for follow-up while on antibiotic therapy.  And three, there are those parents who just out of the blue decide to drop by just to say that their children were already all better.

So wanting to get better patient compliance and follow-up I tried a different tack.  Secretly, and against health center schedules, I asked a number of patients to just come back for follow-up on certain afternoons where there were no scheduled consultations (read: no need to wait in line for hours) and asked them to come and see me directly.  But still, none of them ever came back.  For this week, the passing of days seem to bury me deeper in my disappointment.

One can argue it could be due to poor doctor-patient relationship.  But to this I will have to strongly disagree.  In my group, I am the least likely to get annoyed.  I do not  get irritated easily and I can honestly only count two instances when I had to raise my voice just to get my point across to a non-compliant patient.  Di talaga ako nagtataray, as in!.  I play with the kids (if time permits) and have learned to make small talk just to build rapport.   I shower praises on mothers who breastfeed and commend those who bring their children immediately for consult not waiting for the patient’s symptoms to get worse.  In other words, I expend effort just to have a good relationship with my patients.  And for every rise in pitch of my easily irritated health center’s MD’s voice, there is a compensatory centimeter increase in the width of my smile and a tad more gentleness in my handling of patients.

So yes, being in my health center has been quite disappointing.

Until today, that is, when my first patient came back.  Hooray!  I was so glad that the mother took all the trouble to come early, stand in line and wait to be seen.  And of course, I was so glad that after only 3 days of antibiotic therapy the infant’s lungs had cleared up a bit.  Now with better appetite and activity, she was smiling as if apparently well.

It’s funny how a week’s disappointment is easily reversed by just one parent committed to giving her child the appropriate health care.

Suffice to say, that I went home today quite satisfied, not minding my headache.  On the jeepney ride home I wasn’t even bothered by the loud music booming from the cd player.  As if the heavens conspired to finally lift the veil of my disappointment, for a change, they were playing music I actually liked.