Sense of service?

Below is a copy of a letter sent to Dr K A Dinshaw, director of the Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai. It is reproduced with the permission of the author, who brought it to our notice.

Dear Dr Dinshaw,

My wife, a senior citizen over 67 years old, took advantage of the free cancer check-up organised by your Preventive Oncology in March this year.

The experience she had at the TMC was, to say the least, horrifying. She was pushed from pillar to post, sent up and down floors, between buildings and traversing long corridors. All this could have been obviated if there was even a semblance of planning on the part of the organisers.

Today, she went because she had been asked to ‘collect’ the reports. It was the same story of being pushed around interminably. And after collecting the reports and the signatures of the doctors, the counter clerk took the entire file and said she could leave. She asked for the reports for her records, for which she had been specifically called there. She was told that the file remained with the TMC; she doesn’t get any report from the file.

First, what was the propriety in calling her there at all if she was not to be given the reports or the copies thereof? Surely, they could have themselves made arrangements by which all reports are sent to one central record section for filing and records? Second, what is the point of getting the examination done if patients can’t have the reports or copies thereof for their records? There was no element of courtesy at any stage, leave aside any sense of service, in any of the staff or the doctors she had the misfortune to be pitted against.

Admittedly, this was a free camp. But, does it mean that the patients should be treated as beggars? Better not to have such free camps at all, in that case. And, it is not only in cases of free camps but even in cases of paying patients, the treatment meted out to them is no better.

You, Dr Dinshaw, and most of your senior colleagues must have travelled far and wide. Why can’t you train up your staff and doctors to come up to the level of service and dedication you find in, say, the UK and the US?

I sincerely hope that you will be able to bring in substantial improvement in the outlook of all your staff.

Yours truly,