I'm a bit surprised if I ring my doctor in town in the morning and can't get an appointment for the next day at the latest. Usually if I ring in the morning I can get an appointment in the afternoon.
But then I live in New Zealand, there are constant news stories about a lack of doctors but it sounds like we are doing well compared.
What do you do if you're really sick?
That is an excellent question. And it's part of what prompted me to finally get a GP. Two events occurred in close succession back in the spring. First, I fell on my knee and bruised it quite badly. It was hugely swollen, and I really thought I might have fractured the knee cap. Then, a few weeks later, I developed an ear infection. In both cases, my initial reaction was "Shit! What do I do?! What do I do?!".With my knee, I got lucky. My company has a nurse on staff, who made a call, and got a doctor to fit me in that afternoon. I had briefly considered going to the Emergency room. Which, for a lot of people in the US, insured and uninsured, is where they go for primary care. But I decided I didn't want to sit around for 5 or 6 hours to have some resident poke at me, tell me it was a bruise, ice and elevate it. I could do that for free at home.
With the ear, I went to a MinuteClinic - a walk-in drugstore clinic staffed by a nurse practitioner. Its not a perfect model, but it definitely fills a need. You don't need an appointment. You get in, get your self diagnosis confirmed, get some drugs (maybe pick up some milk and glossy celebrity tabloids), and you're on your way.
But for a lot of people, I think they just make the most of whatever services are available. Otherwise, they just do without and hope for the best.
2 comments:
Hey Whit,
This comment is almost totally unrelated to this post...almost. The gist of it is this: you should have told me I was in your blogroll, more than happy to return the favor. How is that almost related? The answer is how I found out I was on your blogroll. I was checking out my sitemeter stats (you do look at yours, right? Fascinating stuff there, for instance, a significant portion of my European hits come from people doing Google searches for "freshsnaps". WT... is there a European product called freshsnaps, but, I digress.), anyway, someone in Singapore was on your site and clicked my link from your page. Crazy, eh?
Riiight, so it's all about making sure you're on their books already and then you're sweet. Makes some sense I suppose.
Probably more people in most American cities than there are in the whole of NZ so some sort of of order in the chaos is necessary.
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