Service Standards

I hate the service line with a passion. Well, maybe not service line in general, but definitely service line in Singapore hospitals. How people like my supervisors, university graduates, can be brain-washed into believing the service standards set out by the higher ups are the way to go is beyond my understanding.

Basically, their idea of a good service is to bully the poorly educated, good-natured, or meek patients while groveling the feet or licking the boots of those who can speak louder, speak more fluently, or knows how to write complain letters.

Recently we had a few cases of patients demanding to be served immediately after they missed their queue numbers. In all cases, the pharmacists they spoke to were already halfway checking another patient's medicine. Even though those patients who missed their numbers were told they would be served by the next available pharmacist, they insisted on being served immediately. One gave the excuse of having to rush off for meeting. Another, like a broken record, kept asking why she cannot be served immediately. Whatever it is, one of those patients wrote in to complain that she (I think, since the recent cases all involved female patients) was not happy that she was not served immediately.

The end result was a discussion at a recent roll call whereby the supervisor said, we should be flexible, stop whatever we are doing to attend to the patient immediately ie. dispense the medicine immediately, if he/she is agitated or getting angry. See where this is going? Patient A throws tantrum, threatens to complain, so pharmacist is suppose to stop checking patient B's medicine and attend to patient A immediately. Does not matter that patient B has to wait longer than necessary to get his/her medicine. We do not want a complain from patient A do we? Throw in patients C and D who are equally demanding and patient B, who happens to be good-natured and patient, will have to wait even longer for an available pharmacist to attend to him/ her.

In conclusion, we are basically providing "good" services to patients A, C and D at the expense of patient B. How is that considered good service is beyond my puny brain. If you are a service provider, be kind to the patient Bs out there. They don't deserve to be shoddily treated just because they don't make a nuisance of themselves.