British citizen creates national uproar in Quebec

[viper37]

Some people can never be satisfied.  He got to wait only 16hrs for his treatment, instead of the average 18hrs, yet he still complains!

Stupid Brits

(it's a funny read btw, and I agree with most of what he says of our health care system)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article6814702.ece

What's the Canadian word for 'lousy care'?

While I was away, there was a big debate about how Barack Obama might sort out America's healthcare system, which, say the critics, is chronically awful and fantastically unfair.
It's also bonkers. I was once denied treatment at a Detroit hospital because the receptionist's computer refused to acknowledge that the United Kingdom existed. Even though I had a wad of cash, and a wallet full of credit cards, she was prepared to let me explode all over her desk because her stupid software only recognised addresses in the United States.
Some say America should follow Canada's lead, where private care is effectively banned. But having experienced their procedures while on holiday in Quebec, I really don't think that's a good idea at all.
A friend's 13-year-old son tripped while climbing off a speedboat and ripped his leg open. Things started well. The ambulance arrived promptly, the wound was bandaged and off he went in a big, exciting van.   Now, we are all used to a bit of a wait at the hospital. God knows, I've spent enough time in accident and emergency at Oxford's John Radcliffe over the years, sitting with my sobbing children in a room full of people with swords in their eyes and their feet on back to front. But nothing can prepare you for the yawning chasm of time that passes in Canada before the healthcare system actually does any healthcare.
It didn't seem desperately busy. One woman had lost her face somehow — probably a bear attack — and one kid appeared to have taken rather too much ecstasy, but there were no more than a dozen people in the waiting room. And no one was gouting arterial blood all over the walls.
After a couple of hours, I asked the receptionist how long it might be before a doctor came. In a Wal-Mart, it's quite quaint to be served by a fat, gum-chewing teenager who claims not to understand what you're saying, but in a hospital it's annoying. Resisting the temptation to explain that the Marquis de Montcalm lost and that it's time to get over it, I went back to the boy's cubicle, which he was sharing with a young Muslim couple.
A doctor came in and said to them: "You've had a miscarriage," and then turned to go. Understandably, the poor girl was very upset and asked if the doctor was sure.
"Look, we've done a scan and there's nothing in there," she said, in perhaps the worst example of a bedside manner I've ever seen.
"Is anyone coming to look at my son?" asked my friend politely. "Quoi?" said the haughty doctor, who had suddenly forgotten how to speak English. "Je ne comprends pas." And with that, she was gone.
At midnight, a young man who had been brought up on a diet of American music, American movies and very obviously American food, arrived to say, in French, that the doctors were changing shift and a new one would be along as soon as possible.
By then, it was one in the morning and my legs were becoming weary. This is because the hospital had no chairs for relatives and friends. It's not a lack of funds, plainly. Because they had enough money to paint a yellow line on the road nine yards from the front door, beyond which you were able to smoke.
And they also had the cash to employ an army of people to slam the door in your face if you poked your head into the inner sanctum to ask how much longer the wait might be. Sixteen hours is apparently the norm. Unless you want a scan. Then it's 22 months.
At about 1.30am a doctor arrived. Boy, he was a piece of work. He couldn't have been more rude if I'd been General Wolfe. He removed the bandages like they were the packaging on a disposable razor, looked at the wound, which was horrific, and said to my friend: "Is it cash or credit card?"
This seemed odd in a country with no private care, but it turns out they charge non-Canadians precisely what they would charge the government if the patient were Céline Dion. The bill was C$300 (about £170).
The doctor vanished, but he hadn't bothered to reapply the boy's bandages, which meant the little lad was left with nothing to look at except his own thigh bone. An hour later, the painkillers arrived.
What the doctor was doing in between was going to a desk and sitting down. I watched him do it. He would go into a cubicle, be rude, cause the patient a bit of pain and then sit down again on the hospital's only chair.
Seven hours after the accident, in a country widely touted to be the safest and best in the world, he applied 16 stitches that couldn't have been less neat if he'd done them on a battlefield, with twigs. And then the anaesthetist arrived to wake the boy up. In French. This didn't work, so she went away to sit on the doctor's chair because he was in another cubicle bring rude and causing pain to someone else.
Now, I appreciate that any doctor who ends up working the night shift at a provincial hospital in Nowheresville is unlikely to be at the top of his game, and you can't judge a country's healthcare on his piss-poor performance. And nor should all of Canada be judged on Quebec, which is full of idealistic, language-Nazi lunatics.
But I can say this. If private treatment had been allowed, my friend would have paid for it. He would have received better service and in doing so, allowed Dr Useless to get to the woman with no face or ecstasy boy more quickly. Though I suspect he would have used our absence to spend more time sitting down.
The other thing I can say is that Britain's National Health Service is a monster that we can barely afford. But in all the times I've ever used the big, flawed giant, no one has ever pretended to be French, no one has spent more time swiping my credit card than ordering painkillers and there are many chairs.

Dissastified customers are always a plague.


Oh, btw, it's true what he says about foreigners getting treated here:  you'll have to pay before seeing the doc, even if you're bleeding to death.  But I disagree about the general 'rudeness' of the staff.  It seems common among anglos that when people don't speak english they are automatically "rude".
There's some cultural misconception in there, for sure.  The citizens of Quebec are expected to wait patiently until their turn arrives and not ask every 2-3hrs how long it's gonna be 'til they see a doctor. 

EDIT:  sorry for the poor formatting.  Just click the link and read the text. Only GF is too lazy to click links anyway

[The Brain]

Not speaking English is rude, since you know it. And if you don't know it then what the fuck kind of third world person are you?

[Ideologue]

Sounds horrible.  The ER is always a nightmare, though.

[Grey Fox]

Brits, never happy.

[citizen k]

Brits, never happy.

Really? I always thought of the Brits as rather tolerant of subpar service.

[Josquius]

I dunno, it seems here that the doctor did speak English to the people next to them yet when he tried it they mysteriously didn't anymore....now that is rude.

And asking how long you have to wait is totally acceptable in any rational system. Its not a complaint, just a question.

Probally a lot of exageration and typical British moaning but a national uproar just due to this?

Really? I always thought of the Brits as rather tolerant of subpar service.

A misconception.
Americans have really alien ideas of what 'good service is'. Brits don't want happy smiley people bothering us every 10 minutes to ask if everything is OK.
We just want them to do the job they're paid for and serve us in a timely manner.
American style in your face service is found to be very off putting by many.

More relevant to here of course; we have a positive outlook on life contrary to the negative view of many other countries.
To the British the world is a wonderful, perfect place by default. Hence any deviation there upon must be noted.
Many others though seem to believe the world to be a absolute shit hole by default and any minor improvement on that needs praising to the ends of the earth.

[Sheilbh]

Brits, never happy.

Really? I always thought of the Brits as rather tolerant of subpar service.

We don't like to make a fuss, unless service is truly abysmal.  But we do love moaning about service (and everything else).  It's not that we're tolerant of subpar service, it's more that we positively relish it. 

[Cecil]

Ah after looking at the link I realized it was Jeremy Clarkson who written the article. Truly a giant among men.

[Viking]

When you speak German to a Francophone they usually learn English pretty damn quickly.

[jimmy olsen]

More relevant to here of course; we have a positive outlook on life contrary to the negative view of many other countries.
To the British the world is a wonderful, perfect place by default. Hence any deviation there upon must be noted.
Many others though seem to believe the world to be a absolute shit hole by default and any minor improvement on that needs praising to the ends of the earth.

The British are definitely not viewed as optimists on this side of the pond.

[Sheilbh]

The British are definitely not viewed as optimists on this side of the pond.

We're not, I don't think.  We're tepid at best.

[Richard Hakluyt]

There are complications here.

British people are pessimists and expect things to be crap. If they are not crap then we are surprised and delighted, if they are crap then we are vindicated and perceptive. Either way we win.

So, to look at it from Clarkson's point of view. He's in a Canadian hospital, they can (a) either treat the kid quickly and he gets to back to his hotel quickly, or (b) they can keep the kid waiting for hours and hours and get pretentious about their silly dialect. Luckily for Clarkson the hospital sucked; his next column is more or less written for him and he has the satisfaction of knowing that foreigners are even bigger wankers than Englishmen 

[Darth Wagtaros]

Frogs going out of their way to be asses is nothing new.  This limey jerk should have expected them to be slovenly and barely competent.

[saskganesh]

this is only national news in Quebec.

btw, I've known a furriner to be treated at no charge in BC. because he could not pay.

anyway, in Canada, it is up to the provinces to deliver national standards. so we do not have one standard of service, we have 11 and two halves.

[Zoupa]

I love how he's all upset about the folks speaking french