Customer Service in Nigeria - Health Sector

Following from my maiden blog on the practise of customer service in Nigeria, below is a brief snippet of my experience in the last couple of days in the health sector.

On Tuesday the 17th of September went to visit my mum, who had an infection from a minor cut she got on her right toe. On getting there she was so week and the leg seemed to have gone worse. I with the help of my wife decided to take her to the hospital. After deliberating on where to take her based on cost and type of professional care we were looking for, we decided to take her to the General hospital in Ikeja. On getting there to my surprise they were most cordial, after about 30 minutes we finally got to see the doctor, who after examining her told us we had to move her to another General hospital somewhere in Ifako, Agege.




I asked him why and he politely told me they were out of beds. So off we went to the ifako general hospital. After spending about 2 hours in traffic to the hospital with my old sick mother in the car, we got to the hospital and the nurse or matron on duty asked to see the patient, i told her she couldn't walk cause of her condition, so she decided to come to the car. On getting there, she started asking her questions on what happened. We tried to answer cause we knew she couldn't talk cause she was struggling to breath. The nurse told us to let her answer herself. After drilling the poor woman forcing her to talk, she eventually told us the same story of no beds available.

Now at this time of the day which was around 10.30 pm, we got frustrated at this lack of facilities and nonchalant attitude of the staff. But we had to do the needy to safe the life of my mother. She told us to go to the General hospital in Gbagada, but we decided to take her to a private one for fear of being told the same story.

So, we decided to bring her to the ST Leo's catholic hospital in Ikeja. On getting there the matron also came down to see the patient and told us the same story. She also said they didn't have the expertise in house to treat such cases. At this point we resorted to begging. After pleading for a couple of minutes, she agreed to take her in and promised that a specialist will come in the next day to see her. By the way we decided to come to this hospital based on the good referrals we got from family members on the low cost and quality of service provided compared to other private hospitals. The hospital and facilities looked quite nice, with clean environment and A/c's in all the rooms. We were quite happy that we made that decision to bring her there.

But a day after the attitude of the nursing staff was a total opposite of what we heard. But at this point i will leave that story to be continued another day.

Please read through and comment. All comments will be most welcome. We need to talk about this lack of facilities and inefficiency in our hospitals.

Till next time peace and love .................

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