Ian On The Red Dot

On Monday, the holiday ended rather dramatically for my gf and me. We thought she had broken her leg because her leg had got trapped under something heavy and the lower part of it looked terribly deformed. So, we rushed her down to Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s Emergency department to get a X-ray of her leg and see a doctor.

We waited for 4 hours. Boy, did it feel long.

While waiting, I realized what was one of the problems with the Singapore healthcare system. The problem was people like my gf and me.

Here is the thing. When the accident first occurred, it looked really bad. Looked. We didn’t know how bad it was but because it looked back, we ruled out going to a GP, not that we knew of any 24 hours GP and I’ll come to that later, and went to a hospital.

I wonder how many of the cases at the Emergency department could have been handled by a GP. Actually, is the only range of options a GP, Polyclinic, Hospital? Are there any other healthcare providers in between - like a better equipped private clinic with its own X-ray facilities?

See. That’s the problem. I don’t know what my options are. And I should know. I should know so that we don’t unnecessarily tax resources that should be catering to real emergencies. And even if there might not be enough real emergencies to keep the nurses and doctors busy the whole night, at least it allows them to get some rest and prevent mistakes due to tiredness. I know I know. Aren’t these people operating in shifts. Shouldn’t they have been allocated enough rest time.

Well, think about this. How many of you can sustain a whole day of intense focused work even with the lunch breaks and tea breaks thrown in. Seriously. How many?

So, what’s the problem. Simple. I am not equipped with the basic skills to assess my own body.

I just learned about the Apgar score from Seth Godin’s The Big Moo. It is such simple ingenuity.

The Apgar score was devised in 1952 by Dr. Virginia Apgar as a simple and repeatable method to quickly and summarily assess the health of newborn children immediately after childbirth.

The Apgar score is determined by evaluating the newborn baby on five simple criteria on a scale from zero to two and summing up the five values thus obtained. The resulting Apgar score ranges from zero to 10. The five criteria (Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration) are used as a mnemonic learning aid.

I think we, as individuals who I hope are concerned about our own well-being, should learn more of such knowledge and methods.

A big part of the problem is us. We aren’t aware enough to prevent taxing the system.