No access to care: patient experiences

MS.

PHILIPS: It all began about a year ago. I was at work, and suddenly I got a terrible pain just in my lower back. I couldn’t move that much due to the pain. So I thought of going to a traumatologist, because I thought it was something to do with my muscles. So I booked an appointment, and in the meantime, I just had some painkillers. They were not helping that much. At the traumatologist office, I was running a fever and had had some pain while going to the restroom. The traumatologist concluded that it was not a muscle problem. It was most likely some kind of complicated urinary tract infection.

He told me to go to the emergency department, and there they told me that I was lucky I didn’t get permanent kidney damage. They told me that I should always go to a general practitioner, and not straight to a specialist.

MS PETERS: I went to my general practitioner for some breathing problems I was having. I also had a fever, chills, and a hideous cough, so she told me that it was most likely to be a lung infection, and she needed an X-ray to be sure it was not something else. So she told me to go to the diagnostic imaging department to get it this done. So after the consultation, I tried to find the place, but I couldn’t find it at all. The sign said radiology and some other complicated words, but I had no idea where to go.

So I spent an hour trying to find this place, until a social worker explained to me that diagnostic imaging was a new name for radiology department, but the signs were not updated yet. How angry I was with myself for not knowing that. I was so close to giving up and going home. MS.

ROBERTS: What I remember is that I was recently diagnosed with a heart condition by my GP, but he recommended me to visit a cardiologist in order to get specific treatment. But I had no idea where one could be, and I didn’t ask, because I was afraid of the doctor thinking I was daft or something. If he said I should go to one, maybe I was supposed to already know one. So I went home to look for a cardiologist on the internet, and the one I found was in another city and only worked on weekdays, which was kind of difficult for me, because it meant I needed to get one day off of work, which was of course not paid.

So I went with this cardiologist for half a year or so, until my GP asked how it was going with Dr. Johnson. To which I replied, Dr. Johnson? Who’s that? My GP, astonished, said the cardiologist who works here on the weekends. And I felt so ashamed of myself. No one told me that, and I hadn’t asked.