I have a bone to pick…

Recently I had surgery (not plastic) requiring a general anaesthetic and one morning I woke up with aches and pains. My doctor wasn’t available so I rang my local hospital emergency department and I was put through to a woman who said,

“We can’t really give advice over the phone so you can come in or see your doctor, or I can put you through to the medical advice line. Which would you like?”

I said to her, “What is the medical advice line, is that recorded information, or do I speak to a doctor?”

And she said, “I don’t know, I’ve never rung them.”

I said, “What?” and she repeated, “I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to them.”

Lady, you’re working in customer service at a major hospital, perhaps with sick and vulnerable customers; surely it would be helpful if you knew some details about the advice line?

“What do you want?”

I was so furious I hung up on her. I couldn’t believe she would say that to someone so obviously seeking help. I was in pain but lucid and close to the hospital, what if someone who is very distressed rings her and she says that?

When I calmed down I rang back and spoke to a different operator who put me straight through to a Health Direct registered nurse. We spoke for 14 minutes, she opened a file, gave me great advice and took all my details.

Why was the first one allowed anywhere near the phone? What annoys me most is that she was as clueless as Tony Robbins when talking about the MeToo movement.

Who do I complain to? There is probably only one poor woman answering the phones because her colleagues have been made redundant, and clueless lady was probably just an executive with no real hospital experience who happened to be walking past a ringing phone at the time. Do I call an ombudsman? The hospital chief executive? The local paper? Or just whinge about it on social media?

If I was paranoid I’d think the state government were trying to run our health care system into the ground, strip our services to bare bones, so idiot pollies can privatise our hospitals. Where can we find politicians with vision? The ones we’ve got are spineless. I wish I could say it is going tibia okay.