Well what happen's next will be the results of my next appointment at the hospital.
Must say hospitals are quick to take your money!
well to be honest i have learned that I should be careful and go to someone with experience and not to random places. If I knew before hand that this was not the place to go I wouldn't have gone here. I found a good GP though and they are great.
Yes but we should not compare the health system in a third world country to Switzerland.
Why not? They're actually really quite comparable
Switzerland's GDP - £300 billion
Switzerland's population - 7 million
UK NHS budget - £100 billion
UK NHS employees - 1.7 milllion
.
I don't have any rep left to give, but WJ, you rock.
Sorry to hear this happened to you, Rina.
My own experiences with the University hospital have been mixed. The GYNs I've seen there in the clinic have been very nice, the ER doctors, depending on who you get, are either quite caring, sympathetic and do a thorough job, or give you an attitude and tell you to go to a polyclinic next time you think you have pneumonia or a thrombosis in your leg. Sounds like you got the latter I also went to the sleep clinic there and the 12-year-old prat of a doctor they assigned to do the consultation was the most arrogant, argumentative jack@$$ I'd ever met in a doctor-patient setting. After 15 minutes of his crap, I tore him a new one and told him to get lost. Then I went to the receptionist and demanded to see a "real professional" and told them that there was NO way I was going to deal with that amateur they gave me, especially since I was paying $$$$ for it. She sent me to the head doctor of the sleep clinic who was respectful and had a nice bedside manner! Why does one need to blow a gasket to get courteous treatment?
Forget about waiting for an apology. Sadly, it's been my experience at work and in situations where I am paying for a service that Swiss people never admit that they've made a mistake, and rarely apologize.
I don't agree with that line of thought. In the UK you are already paying health insurance through taxes (which are higher than in Switzerland), the difference being that you don't have as much choice as in here, you are stuck with an inefficient government-led NHS.
So, if i may, I would like to rephrase your last paragraph: If you had private cover in the UK on top of the one you are already paying with your higher taxes you could have had it done just as quickly ....
Yes, I agree with that statement.
Having worked in an academic hospital in the US, I can tell you that they are all quite similar in some ways. Academic hospitals get everything, and they have to train everyone. Getting such places to apologize in the US is not that easy either. I've also learned to be respectful but demanding. But it's hard to ask questions when you're out of it, or feel like crap, and when you feel vulnerable.
If you have a complex case, and arouse someone's interest, academic hospitals are great. On a routine basis, a "community" hospital here is better. But it's tough to know what to do in an emergency, with no primary care doc.
Here the thing - seems to be to find yourself a good primary care doc, and if you're a woman, a good gyn and go from there. It's really similar in the US too. What I find different is that insurance seems to behave better for the most part.
We'll be moving from Bern to Zurich early next year, so I'll be checking out docs and hospitals in the area over the autumn.... unfortunately, I need them. Sigh.
Well, the problem with waiting times for routine stuff in the UK is perhaps not relevant to acute problems?
Pet subject of mine. 30 years in Switzerland and a LOT of experience with the health service, also I have noticed that doctors are notoriously bad at diagnosis. Have many examples, both personal and from people I know, where a prompt diagnosis could have saved months (or even years) "shopping around", going from doctor to doctor and therapist to therapist to find a treatment or diagnosis. Diagnosis is half the cure.
Personally I am of the opinion that the training of western doctors should include eye/pulse diagnosis that is used in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine and which is usually very accurate.
As latigresse points out - don't expect an apology because Swiss people don't make mistakes and are always right
One of my best friends in the US is a physician - actually a psychiatrist - she was trained about 20 years ago. Her mentor trained them to sense a lot of things by simple touch - pulse, blood pressure etc. I don't know if this is the same as what Enaj is talking about - I do know that the idea of touch in Western medicine is not as prevalent as it might be. And good observational skills are sometimes better than reliance on a panel of numbers.
First of all, here in Switzerland you should NOT go to hospital on your own directly, but first of all you have to consult a normal doctor. And then you will get transferred if necessary to a hospital by the doctor. The doctor will of course arrange that you get to the right department right from the beginning.
Is it O.K. to say English people generalize?
Generally speaking, yes.
Exactly the same as in the UK, in fact.
OK - so how the do the taxes in the UK compare with most other EU countries?
CH taxes are much lower - but the fact is medical cover here has to be paid for (up front, if no insurance)
As somebody has already pointed out only 7% of the taxes go to the NHS.
I am no apologist for the NHS system - but compare apples with apples
I thought it was fairly well acknowledged now that the UK NHS is actually one of the most efficient systems in the world in terms of total national expenditure spent on health as a percentage of GDP and the amount spent on administration.
Of course people's experiences vary massively but this is true in every health system. I am sure that people have good and bad experiences in Switzerland and I am sorry that OP has had a bad one. My only problem with the Swiss system is the cost of insurance, high cost of medications and having to pay a franchise. In the UK I would never think about whether I could afford to see a doctor and I always had a positive experience with doctors and hospitals there.
A recent survey also showed that survival and return to a normal life after a major cardiac event is highest in the UK. The reputation of the hospitals near us is dire and some of the stories that have happened to some of our friends in the last few years in CH make your eyes water. Yes hospitals do look very nice - but for me it does not indicate good medicine. It seems that excellent medical care here in CH is even more of a lottery than in the UK. A concern for us as we are not able to choose where and by whom we would be treated in case of a serious illness or accident, due to pre-existing conditions. In case of major medical problems, we would go straight back to the UK I have to say.
For those who have not lived in the UK for some years- waiting lists are now much much shorter and sometimes non-existent. One of our neighbours here in CH has recently had a knee replacement - he had to wait in agony for nearly a year to get the op.
I haven't been here that long, but my experiences are exactly the same. The good docs I found were absolutely the creme de la creme, fantastic, but the quacks were unbelievably arrogant, the worst I have ever come across. With poor bedsite manners on top. I was overmedicated at birth so had to have a csec, was told to be quiet about it afterwards, treated like Eastern European shouldn't even open a mouth since we are bad in healthcare back there. If they actually knew the healthcare and education is really good there, without the price tag . The docs seemed to be so full of themselves, never listened to the patient as the input was disturbing. They disliked people who wanted to know more in order to make an educated decision on their own, second opinions were offensive to them. I had 2 horrific peds, and a local hospital stay. Our ped even told us she is in no rush to treat stay at home mom's kids. Thanks to her, we are having all sorts of troubles to patch up, and it takes years and it is painful to the little one.
My advice would always be, be alert, get info on your own, always check. Mostly, you won't need it, but if you do..
It is not only in healthcare here, but the overly clinical approach is also in edu. Treating kids like they are numbers, talking of diagnosis only, without really taking in the immediate impact on a child. Gut feeling hasn't made it here, yet, for some. Some professionals do not trust themselves enough for that, they need rules.
Unless your doc is a bad one, or refuses to book you in. What makes the system good is actually the flexibility, if you get stuck with a poor diagnosis, bad GP or ped, you can go directly to hosp or a specialist. The system is not used to 2nd opinions somewhere, but soon will be...I'd advise people who are not happy with diagnosis, to act.
This is something that everyone should understand about Swiss insurance - and one that, at least to me, was not obvious until too late.
The type of supplemental coverage you choose can determine the level of care you are entitled to in a hospital. The names are misleading; Allegemeinabteilung, Semi-Private and Private do not just differentiate between the type of room you get - these also refer to the level o fexpertise of the doctor who treats you. Semi-private coverage means that you may see an Oberarzt, Privat means that you may see a Chefarzt. General ward means that you get the luck of the draw - often a more junior member of staff.
From discussions on other threads, it seems that in some places/cantons this may not be a big deal. But in other places one can find oneself without access to qualified care if one only has general ward hospitalization insurance.
I made this mistake, thinking where I slept would not matter if I was ill enough to be hospitalized. I found out the hard way just how big a mistake I had made, and it's too late now - due to my age and history, I do not qualify to upgrade my hospitalization insurance. I would urge everyone to review your coverage.
I, too, will go back home should I ever need hospitalization again.