‘Nightmare for Patients’

Mana (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 7, 29 September 1977, Page 1

‘Nightmare for Patients’

When people are sick they usually feel depressed, miserable and worried. The idea of seeking medical help is to have the depression, misery and worry removed by the healing arts of a doctor. Most people in New Zealand are able to get medical attention quite easily. Not so the people of Otara. Instead of a visit to a doctor being easy and comforting, for the Otara patient it can be a hideous nightmare, filled with hassles and frustrations.

A meeting was held recently between community groups and an Otara doctor to discuss the problems encountered by many Otara patients.

For most patients in Otara, they are faced with long waits, confusion, inconveniences, expense and wasted time.

Otara Correspondent One of the problems is that people can not get telephone appointments. The patients have to personally go to this particular surgery and book his/her name and have to wait for up to four hours before they could see the doctor. Or to be told to come at 6.00 p.m. on the same day if he had booked in the morning.

This has caused a lot of inconvenience and great expense to the Otara patients, especially mothers with young families. Some people complain that Europeans are always jumping the queue with the blessing of the receptionist. They do not understand why, because there are supposed to be no appointments by telephone. The hard struck people are those with children who are unable to communicate

properly in English. The Otara doctor concerned stressed in the meeting that emergency cases have been always looked into immediately. But because of language barriers, Polynesian families are always having to wait long hours or have to go home beContinued Page 5