I am not so sure about if they earn more they would be more pleasant! I don't think so. My take on this, is that they don't give a shit in the first place. It means more work and they would rather do as little as possible for as long as possible. Helping someone in need has nothing to do with whether you get paid at all. This is, unfortunately what has happened with people who have very little common sense being put into a position of power - no pen but no forms, no water, no bed!
Disgusting!
My night of hell at Jo’burg Gen
Matthew Krouse
30 May 2007 11:59
My best friend is sick. Well, he was, but he is recovering. When he was really down he called me and said he was tired, could hardly walk, was throwing up and thirsty as hell. After a week of battling the odds, he did a superhuman thing: got out of bed and walked from his room in Joubert Park to the Park Station Medical and Dental Centre in Braamfontein. There, for a couple of hundred rand he was diagnosed with diabetes and placed on a drip. He lay there for a day. Once he felt strong enough to walk a few feet, he called me. I dashed over and was party to a pep talk he was given by a doctor who told him that, since he is now diabetic, he should chill for a couple of days and not go to work before returning to the station for further treatment. He was given some pills. As for his dietary requirements, he was told he should keep away from sugar and bread. When we left the Park Station clinic he could hardly walk. I took him home to my quiet apartment in Houghton so he could rest away from the inner-city hustle and bustle. By 9.30pm that night, a Thursday, my friend was vomiting uncontrollably, was falling in and out of consciousness, and was delirious. My friend does not have medical aid so I drove him -- shivering and barely conscious -- in the dead of night, to Johannesburg General Hospital. I swung into the parking lot outside the emergency ward where a dishevelled hospital porter and I dumped him into a wheelchair. I was sent to park my car on the top of Hospital Hill while my friend was pushed inside. When I arrived in the emergency ward lobby my friend was barely conscious, slumped in his wheelchair. I was handed a form and told that, once completed, he could proceed to treatment. It was after 10pm. He needed a doctor and I needed a pen. I walked from official to official, from nurse to nurse, and nobody would loan me a pen. I begged, pleaded -- it seemed that everyone had a pen yet no one was writing. I headed back to my semi-conscious friend. At his side was a nurse. I told her my predicament, begged for a doctor. “No,” she replied, “no completed form, no treatment.” My friend murmured, he was begging for water. I asked the nurse. She pointed to an empty cooler -- no water, no form, no doctor.
Ignoring her protestation I dashed into the treatment section of the emergency ward. Inside there are curtained-off examination beds; on one there was a wailing child, her mother at her side. An elderly woman doctor (who it seems styles herself after the minister of health) was ambling about. I appealed to her, but received the same response: no pens available, no water available and no completed form meant no treatment would be forthcoming. In the corner I spotted a filthy basin with a pink soap dispenser at which the staff wash their hands. On the wall was a paper cup dispenser. I filled a cup with water and dashed back to my friend. Still in his wheelchair, he had been placed to one side. He was in an uncomfortable slump. The nurse stepped forward. I requested a bed. I received the same response: no completed form meant no treatment would be forthcoming; on this basis he could least of all expect a bed. I took one last shot at finding a pen. The nurses became nasty. Eventually I just grabbed. I started to fill in the form on a desk in an open office to one side of the emergency lobby. The curious nurse who had been hovering over my friend, yet not doing much to help, now proceeded to assist me with the form. My friend has a long, complicated surname and when she saw this, she said disapprovingly, “Oh, he is Shangaan.” ‘Fuck you,” I said, “he is human.”I now headed for the seated queue of people apparently waiting to submit their forms to a row of clerks seated behind a row of glass-fronted hatches.
There were about 50 people in the queue. When I got to the end of the queue an elderly woman said, “we are not here for the doctor, you are at the front”. I realised then that these people were probably homeless people who slept in the hospital foyer every night. Two-and-a-half hours after arriving at the hospital, a doctor attended to my friend. In total, between 11pm and 1am that week night I saw only three people needing emergency attention. This is quite contrary to the picture we have of a stressed-out emergency ward of high-powered medical practitioners using high-tech equipment. Over three hours after arriving at the hospital, my semi-comatose friend made it to the inner sanctum of the hospital where, it seems, mostly male medical students, hair gelled in the latest David Beckham hairstyles, and wearing expensive sneakers, work with a lethargic force of nasty nurses. The young doctor in charge that night kept repeating one melodic mantra: “We have no beds, we have no beds.” When he entered the examination room, upon seeing a “cool-looking dude” -- my friend -- rather inappropriately he said: “Hey my man, wassup?”
My friend spent an uncomfortable night on an examination bed. Once the doctor had him stabilised I was told that there were no blankets. It was almost 2am. It was cold. So, in the dead of night, I drove to my flat where I tore my Woolworths queen-sized blanket off my own bed. I drove back to the hospital and ran to the ward. When I arrived, blanket trailing on the ground, the nurses had a good laugh at my expense. How outrageous to see a white man doing something for a black man in need. I’ve also had to supply my friend with three meals a day. For many, this night trip to the general hospital will be the last journey they take. How sad that the system doesn’t allow for an iota of dignity. Next week nurses may be on strike. My friend says that throughout his hospital experience they have been nasty and impatient. Hopefully, if they earn a little better they will, in turn, give a little better.
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