Hi all,
This is the phrase I heard during the 7 years that I lived in Spain.
I remember that when I met my ex-boyfriend in Venezuela, the guy would fill his mouth talking about how wonderful healthcare was in Spain, that people didn’t even think about going to a private doctor because they wouldn’t find the quality of doctors that were in the public system.
I went to Spain to do a master’s degree and during that year I had private insurance. Anyway, I went to the public medical center to register, just in case. The medical center was an old and ugly thing that I had never seen in Venezuela, and it smelled funny.
With my private insurance I went to a private hospital that was the best in Valencia. For the people it was the “top”. When I entered, it didn’t seem like anything special, it was a normal clinic like any of the ones I went to in Caracas.
Of course, the doctors were terrible. I went several times to the emergency room because of stress and anxiety I spent several months with a flu that did not go away and with my defenses on the ground. They directly told me to take antibiotics without even checking me, listening to my lungs, taking a blood test, nothing.
Therefore, I continued to do my medical check ups in Venezuela because even with private insurance, the health system in Spain was overwhelmingly mediocre.
When I started working, I decided to try public health to see how it was.
In Venezuela annually I had a blood test, dental cleaning, check-up with the general practitioner, dermatological check-up and gynecological appointment with cytology included.
When I got to the appointment with the general practitioner I was shocked because the guy told me “Here forget about check-ups, blood test and oral cleaning; You only come here if you are sick and if you go to the dentist, it is to have your tooth removed because you have cavities”.
Was that the wonderful health care system everybody told me about?
In Valencia, I insisted to have my regular tests done, exaggerating everything.
For example, for my knee they did an X-ray and an MRI. Then I went to an appointment with a traumatologist who told me that I had worn cartilage, gave me a poorly photocopied sheet with some exercises and goodbye. If it continued to hurt, I had to ask to be sent to rehab.
Then I moved to Almussafes (a town near Valencia), and Diego’s mother told me to ask to be assigned his family doctor because he was terrific. Later I found out that she had been victim of medical negligence and still recommended him.
There I asked to be sent to rehab and 6 months later they called me to make an appointment. They began the therapy without even having a clue of what I had. After ten days of rehabilitation as my knee continued to hurt, that’s when it occurred to them that it was good to do an MRI.
As in Spain they are still in prehistory, the traumatologist there had no way of seeing the MRI that I did in Valencia, and I was not going to waste my time going to Valencia (It would take a month as minimum to have it). So, they requested a new one.
After that, I spent a whole year to get a diagnosis. I mean, a year going to the dermatologist who had no idea. After receiving the terrible news of an illness that I never would have expected, the negligence of the healthcare sector got worse.
Doctors and nurses who laugh at your pain, lack of empathy and humanity, non-existent tact when taking exams, doctors who don’t even look at your face, incredible waiting times.
That’s not all, at the Hospital de la Ribera they did my first operation and I thought I would not get out alive. More than 5 hours to enter the operating room, some of the staff with a 30cm beard (no mask), dirty nails, people with cell phones without gloves, others eating their sandwich as if they were in their living room. Horrible post-op service.
Then I had to see another specialist and it was the worst and most subnormal that I encountered. 4 hours of delay for the consultation and then complaining that he had not had lunch and that he had no assistant. Besides this, he had no idea of what I had or what treatment I needed.
I left there convinced not to return to that hospital. Fortunately, I found a Venezuelan surgeon in a clinic that was working very well at that time; in fact, entering there was like entering a clinic in a normal country like Germany.
After this I reported to the Ministry of Health absolutely all the incompetents who had seen me in the Hospital de la Ribera, for which I received a lot of letters apologizing.
I also reported the center where they did the knee rehabilitation because a year had passed, and they still had not called me for the MRI. What happened? In a week I had an MRI, X-rays, tacs and I was seen by the traumatologist who had miraculously worked to get the exams that I did in Valencia. It turned out that when you complain, they manage to do their job.
From that moment I began to report absolutely everything. Thanks to that, the people who attended me seemed to be more awake and more polite. I do not know if they had put a note in my file because I did about 50 complaints.
Also, when in Spain they normally wait two years for an MRI, I would get my appointment in up to a month. This is how it should always be, without the need to make a formal complaint.
I also learned to be very awake for everything because in Spain they weren’t going to play with me anymore.
The incredible thing is the enormous amount of medical negligence that there is every day and the amount of people that is let to die.
People who after complaining for a year that the diarrhea does not stop and then it turns out that they have terminal cancer, people with stage one cancer who go to the doctor and are ignored until they arrive at the emergency room with metastases, people who have been bleeding for 4 years due to a bladder problem and still no date for surgery, women who had breast reconstruction and almost died from the infection. The list of what I have seen is endless.
An uncle of Diego was taken to the emergency room in Almería, and he was operated on for an alleged appendicitis. After months of complaining to the doctor after the surgery, he decides to go to a private doctor, and it turns out that he has two tumors. Those tumors must have been seen by those who operated on him for the alleged appendicitis. It should also be noted that they put staples on him, and he almost died of the infection. Yes, in Spain they still put staples.
Diego’s poor uncle spent almost 2 years of being fooled by the doctors. Almost two years of failed operations, infections, going to the emergency room, being sent home again, that he no longer had anything, that later he did, waiting to be called for chemo, etc. Two years suffering from sheer medical negligence and inhumanity. He died and no one even thought of suing the hospital.
When you go down the street, to have a coffee, to the hairdresser, to the doctor, what you hear are stories of medical negligence. Then there are the stories of the people around me, which are many.
But nobody does anything, not even remotely it occurs to them to complain. This health system is paid by everyone who lives and pays taxes in Spain. It is not free, quite the opposite. But they accept that things are like that, they accept that you can be killed by a bad doctor or simply let to die.
So, which is the reality of the public health system in Spain?
It is not free
Most people in Spain believe that health is public and free. According to the law, it is public, but even so, the doctor may not give you the attention you need and solve your problem with an ibuprofen, so for me it is not public. It is not free either, since everyone who lives and works in Spain pays taxes and, therefore, the maintenance of the health system.
There is no prevention
As the first general practitioner told me, you go to the doctor if you are sick and not for check-ups. If you are a conscientious person who takes care of your health and you want to do your annual check-ups, you will have to pay for them separately, or you will have to invent some symptoms to be treated.
That is why the Spanish average is so physically destroyed, because when they get to a medical center, they are almost to die.
Look at my case with the knee, as the cartilage is just worn, they wash their hands; They neither treat me so that it does not advance. But in 50 years I would surely fall into the emergency room for a knee operation.
It is evident that the person who designed this system does not know that prevention is cheaper than having the emergency rooms of hospitals collapsed.
Pills without knowing what you have
If you go to the GP because your head hurts, he will give you pills without even having checked you.
Because in Spain doctors don’t even touch you. When I went to my annual check-ups in Venezuela, the doctor weighed me, measured me, did an electrocardiogram, listened to my heart and lungs, and felt all the organs in my belly. In Spain you die without having a doctor doing a proper check-up to you.
Waiting time
They will prescribe pills for the headache for several months, if you keep complaining they will give you stronger pills for more months, if you keep complaining, hopefully, they will do a blood test, if you keep complaining maybe in two years, they will send a request for an MRI. The appointment for the MRI will be given in one or two years.
0 vocation, 0 humanity, 0 empathy
I had never seen such inhuman and rude people in my life. Having a doctor treat you and not even look at your face is another experience that I only lived in Spain.
The truth is that the vast majority of doctors I met in that country had no vocation at all, it was like they were doing the job with disgust because they had no choice.
Brain Wash
Despite all the above, most people do believe that they have the best healthcare in the world. I think that from childhood they repeat the same thing until they believe it. In addition, the media are putting the same thing all the time.
Impunity
This is the saddest thing. Doctors in Spain do not pay for their lack of vocation or for their negligence. In the United States (or any normal country), a doctor would go to prison or could not work for the rest of his life due to medical malpractice.
From my experience with all the complaints I made to the Ministry of Health, I can tell you that they hide medical negligence very well. You can get medical appointments and tests in a decent time, but for medical malpractice you would have to go to a lawyer. And yet the same attorneys complain that the system in Spain is made to make it impossible to prove medical malpractice.
Spain does not even remotely have “the best healthcare in the world.”