May 23, 2020
HOW TAIWAN HEALTH SYSTEM REALLY IS — I hit my head very hard on the ground to find out
Almost a year ago, I ended up at a Taiwanese hospital, expecting to spend half of my day there, waiting in the ER. This is not what happened, and I wrote a journal entry about it back then.
07/29/2019 — When I told my friends I was going to spend the rest of the summer in Taipei, Taiwan, many of them looked at me quiet worried. The last time I saw them, most of them did not give me a goodbye hug, but more of a «Mélissa is not coming back » type of hug.
Some were surprised by the pictures I sent them portraying a country with drinkable running water, cars, motorcycles, bikes, big buildings, clean streets, the newest technologies and traditional street food stands, held by vendors who nicely try to match you with the richest man they know. Up to this day, I truly feel like I am navigating a random city of the West, except with better food, cleaner streets and a community oriented culture that pushes me to socialize constantly with anyone around me (like with neighbours when it is time to wait for the trash truck to pick up our trash everyday at 8:10pm).
However, as any good hypochondriac, I wondered how hospitals were like here. Were they any different ?
That is why I decided to repetitively and violently hit my head on the kitchen counter untill my ears start bleeding and I was allowed to the nearest ER. Just kidding — while I was skateboarding, I took a curve, lost control of my board and violently hit the ground. It was in slow motion, really. First, it was my left hip. I thought «ok, we’re good, it’s not the head — then I’m gonna hit my shoulder and I’ll just have to fight the pressure on my neck so my head doesn’t hit the ground». You know, that kind of very quick thinking your survival depends on. Then came the shoulder, as expected, AND THEN the arm AND THEN the wrist, which, truly, were not expected. This is when the « slow » in « slow motion » was not happening anymore. So it went hip, then shoulder-arm-wrist, and then my head hit the ground with all the strength my body could possibly deliver.
So here I am, on the ground of a skatepark on an island somewhere in Asia, alone, and what if my ear is bleeding, what if I die here, ALONE ? It is 11a.m and my friends in Canada are asleep. I am not bleeding. I am fairly okay. I can walk. But this fall made me anxious, so I go home. I live on the sixth floor without elevator, and running through the staircase with all my gear under 35°C convinces me that I would not be able to do that if I really needed to go to the ER.
Falling asleep that night, I keep making horror scenarios like, you know, basically dying far away from my friends and not being able to update them because.. well, because I am dead. I wake up the next day, still alive. But since I want to stay alive, I decide to go to the nearest hospital to see a doctor, just in case. I hit my head, for fuck’s sake. Did I mention I do not have health insurance here ?
I went to Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, which is a Buddhist hospital. I know what a hospital is, but I did not know what a Buddhist hospital was like, therefore, I did not know what to expect. The first thing that hit me (ha) was how big and organized the building was. All the staff (from front desk employees to doctors) were wearing a mask. And it is something you also find in restaurants: staff wearing a mask when they serve you food to avoid spitting or just breathing in your food — I live in a hypochondriac wonderland.
The second thing that hit me, was the number of people working there. « So much staff! », I thought, before it came to my mind : there is not « so much » staff. This hospital is simply not understaffed. And this is something I have never seen in my entire life in France, Spain, or Canada. Enough medical staff, what an unusual concept. There even are volunteers to help you navigate the hospital, translate, or take care of the kids accompanying their parent(s).
After seeing a doctor (20 minutes in the ER, yes) and while waiting for my turn to have an x-ray, I looked around : everyone was working. Litterally nobody was on their cellphone or just pretending to work. Everyone was busy, most of them interacted here and there but it seemed to be very professional. As you may know, waiting in the ER is long and boring. Once in Canada, my best friend and I looked around trying to figure out what was taking so long (after 7 hours of waiting), before figuring out that half of the staff was doing all the work, running everywhere, while the other was chatting or not working. And everytime I went, for me or for friends, it was the very same scenario: first, they were understaffed, second, only half of the staff was doing all the work. It is a sort of déjà vu from all the group work I have done throughout my education. I do not know if it is purely cultural or not, but I do think that social pressure plays a role in the scene I have witnessed.
The third thing that hit me is how efficient this whole process was. Under one hour, I had been through the triage, seen a doctor, had an x-ray, seen a doctor again, and paid (for the record, this cost me seventy (70) US$. I do not even know what to say about it, I think the price speaks for itself). I wondered if it had been that fast because I was white (I have been experiencing the white privilege thing for the very first time of my life here because I pass as white in Taiwan, even though I am not), but I looked at the patients in the ER, and it was very efficient for all of them.
Most importantly, and I think it is what I will remember from this experience, I found something I very rarely found in my hospital experiences in the West: compassion. I was treated with compassion. Also, the doctor I saw, when offering me painkillers, said « but if you don’t like medication, we can go to a more traditional treatment ». I said that I, indeed, did not take medication. He respected my choice without giving me the usual judgemental look I get when I tell doctors I do not take medication (but get my vaccines shots) for minor injuries, headaches, or diseases my body can fight without help like the common flu or a cold.
One last thing, that is more of an anecdote than about my experience there. There was a woman waiting for her husband in the ER, and she was wearing a t-shirt reading « a little drama never hurt anyone », and I do not know if she spoke English but wearing this t-shirt at the hospital waiting for her husband was just terrific.
Of course, it was a sensationalist title in a way — I cannot make a generalization about a health system out of one experience in a (Buddhist) hospital in Taipei. But I think it gives a fair idea of what the culture and health system are like here, and of how patients are treated.
05/22/2020 — Little did I know that a few months later, covid19 would hit the world and that my experience of the Taiwanese health care system was, indeed, a very fair representation of what Taiwan was capable of in term of heath care.
