A few days ago around midnight, my father felt something wrong with his body, especially around his stomach muscles. Auspiciously my father’s house is located next to mine, so I could drove him to a big, well reputed hospital nearby very quick. I registered first on the front desk for administration before I walked my father to the Emergency Room (ER) and officers gave me computer generated queuing number in a piece of paper.

After I submitted it to ER, we had to wait for about twenty minutes before officer called us to enter ER. It was Saturday night and ER unexpectedly was very hectic. Full of patients but thank god, one bed available for my father. He laid down in bed and I asked him to wait for a doctor. I saw only one doctor in charged and he was so busy with the telephone calls on his desk. Nurses were occupied from bed to bed. Suddenly one of nurse called me and asked for documents. I told her that we didn’t have it with us. “Must be on reception desk”, I said. But still she required the documents and I had to get it. So I walked out from ER and went to reception for the documents.

A few days ago around midnight, my father felt something wrong with his body, especially around his stomach muscles. Auspiciously my father’s house is located next to mine, so I could drove him to a big, well-reputed hospital nearby very quick. I registered first on the front desk for administration before I walked my father to the Emergency Room (ER) and officers gave me computer generated queuing number in a piece of paper.

After I submitted it to ER, we had to wait for about twenty minutes before officer called us to enter. It was Saturday night and ER unexpectedly was very hectic. Full of patients but thank god, one bed available for my father. He laid down in bed and I asked him to wait for a doctor. I saw only one doctor in charged and he was so busy with the telephone calls on his desk. Nurses were occupied from bed to bed. Suddenly one of nurse called me and asked for documents. I told her that we didn’t have it with us. “Must be on reception desk”, I said. But still she required the documents and I had to get it. So I walked out from ER and went to reception for the documents.

After I got back from reception, I went to my father’s bed. He told me that a doctor visited and examined around his belly. “What the doctor said?” I asked my father. “He said I have diarrhea and he made prescription for it”, my father answered. I tried to make sure that my father was really had diarrhea or something else. He mentioned again about the muscles and he wasn’t sure that it was diarrhea.

I went back to the doctor’s desk and I saw him still busy with telephone calls. After a while I requested to re-examine my father stomach muscles, but he replied with unpleasantly rough tone. He told me that he had already done his job and if it was not satisfying, it was my father’s fault giving the doctor some unclear information. I didn’t wanna argue at the time and took my father home. We didn’t even take the prescription because we thought that the examination wasn’t proper.

The day after, I went to the same hospital to see specialist doctor to have more objective judgment. I made an appointment by phone and had the registration number. Because it was still early call I had queuing number 2. Thirty minutes later we arrived at the hospital and queued more than one hour and the queuing number displayed on the board was already 20. I asked the nurse and she told me that she waited for the documents from front desk or reception. By the time I asked who was going to get those, (the patient or officer) she felt unsure.My prediction, either the nurse was new or she has not being briefed about the SOP (Standard Operation Procedure).   

What I learned from this, is the knowledge management failure. I strongly believe that this well known and well reputed institution has already had a reliable system (from administration, medical practice to payment). But something was not right, and the problem is the implementation of knowledge management.

First, the management didn’t expect that on this Saturday night, ER would be full of people. If this situation anticipated (from historical data), the hospital would prepare more resource. (Human and technology)

Second, Busy telephone calls from doctor who in charge in ER, showed that he was not well prepared with all medical cases or he wasn’t provided with proper knowledge management system on his computer or gadget. One doctor in charged for more that ten patients in crowded situation is very risky.          

Third, untrained employee brings negative impact for business. With proper training, mentoring and coaching from management, this healtlh care business would be a great success

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