I went to Epworth Richmond after spending dozens o...

I went to Epworth Richmond after spending dozens of hours waiting in queues of emergency rooms at public hospitals hoping for better service. How wrong I was!

I had been suffering from headaches and dizziness for close to a month and had visited public EDs multiple times. To their credit, the public hospitals gave me the best care they could and I felt like they genuinely cared about my condition. Unfortunately the last time I visited a public ED, they could not carry out all the tests they should due to a lack of resources.

I went to Epworth Richmond hoping that I'd be able to get tests done quicker. While I was able to able to get a MRI done quickly and saw a good neurologist on the same day (after a 8 hour wait), the quality of the floor doctors on ED was appalling.

After the long wait for the neurologist consultation, the nurses checked my blood pressure before discharging me . My blood pressure was at 180/120. The nurses were concerned and refused to discharge me as this was critically high although I didn't understand how high it was at the time.

The floor doctor who had not even checked on me once during my 8 hour wait, merely put a nitrate sticker on me to artificially reduce the blood pressure as he clearly didn't want anything to do with me other than getting me out of there as quickly as possible. He said he would send my records to my GP and those are yet to be received by my GP either.

It was later on that I found out that blood pressure like that was dangerously high. He also did not tell me about the unbelievable migraine I was about to get later that night due to nitrate either. I might eventually call Epworth to get them to send my health record from the night to my doctor but I doubt that ED doctor even made a record of it.

I have to compliment the nurses though, all of them were wonderful.

All in all I'm pretty sure the doctors at the public hospital were far more attentive and knowledgeable.

If you are planning on visiting a private hospital, I suggest you give a public hospital one try beforehand. You will end up saving a lot of money but more importantly, get the service of better and more caring medical professionals.