dirty bird doctor

An experience I definitely don't recommend is going to a Chinese doctor. I needed to go the other day (Mom, I'm fine, don't have a heart attack) and it was not in my top 100 most fun things ever.

Obviously that's a thing I needed a Chinese person to accompany me for. Unfortunately, about 20 of our 25 Chinese TAs at my school left at the end of last weekend to go back to university in Changchun. The ones that are left are all people I'm not exceptionally close to, at all. My Chinese friends outside of them are my students (who I didn't want to take) and males (who I also didn't want to take). I looked at the schedule, sucked it up and asked one of the girls that seemed the most relaxed to go with me on a morning I knew she didn't have to work.

There are a zillion hospitals and clinics here; generally unless you have a cold, you need to go to a hospital. I asked a friend for a recommendation, so we went to the hospital for the oil company (the "Oil Hospital"). You never make an appointment to see a doctor here, and you don't use your insurance either (not sure why I have an international health insurance policy at this point...).

When you walk in, you go to the registration desk, tell them your name, age and the department that you need. They give you a small booklet, which serves as your chart. They have no permanent record system and they don't ask for any id or even your last name. After that, you take your "chart" to the checkout counter and pay for it (three yuan). Then you go up to whatever department you need and wait to have your initial checkup.

chart!

checkout counter

Initial checkup equals you and whoever else feels like wandering in talking to a doctor/nurse/who knows? and describing what's wrong in a room with other people doing the same. Then they tell you what you need to do (e.g. tests, actual physical exam, etc.), print out something saying as much and you take that down to the checkout, pay again (my exam was 20 yuan) and bring your receipt back up for whatever you need. If you have an exam and then need some tests like I did, you get a printout, go pay (three different lab tests came to 195 yuan) and do some more running around. There also seemed to only be maybe one or two hospital staff working each department. And this was a big hospital.

As far as cleanliness and privacy go, forget about it. For any tests, you carry the samples around yourself. I definitely saw people wandering around with slides smeared with bodily fluids on them completely uncovered, so that if they fell or bumped into you, whatever was on their slide would get on you. Ick. The whole place was dirty, per China standards, and don't even think about going in the bathroom. Which naturally had no soap. Or tissue. In retrospect, I'm honestly not even sure that my exam doctor wore gloves.

The exam rooms are lockable, but nobody really does lock them, and when the doctor goes in or out, they just leave the doors open. I saw more than a few strangers' downstairs mixups (yes, that is a Might Boosh reference).

I ended up with two prescriptions (no pills, apparently they hate the easy way of doing things), that cost me 295 yuan. Once they explained everything, I definitely knew I didn't need nearly as much as they gave me, but whatever.

So that was that. Hopefully there will be no rinse and repeat in this case.