So today I had that wonderful experience of dealing with the difficult situation of needing a dentist whilst being on an NHS waiting list to register… There are thousands of people on the list and I suspect many have had the same situation as I had today. Toothache…. one of those really nasty pains… what joy… Unfortunately for me my wisdom tooth was coming through and caused an infection. Bad wisdom tooth… I would have thought it would know better.
Well I was stuck waiting on this waiting list for over 2 months just to get an appointment to confirm registration. But whilst waiting found myself with this evil infection and needed some antibiotics, I knew what was wrong and what was needed to fix it. I call my dentist (8:30am)where I’m on the waiting list and they tell me that they don’t have any spaces til August!!! Yep you heard me right. No appointments at all… So I make an emergency appointment with my GP (Call made at 9:00am)…. no problem til I see them (2:00pm)…. They agree there’s some sort of infection but say that they aren’t allowed to treat it… and give me the number for NHS direct! Grrrr…. so then I walk out and call NHS direct and explain to them what the crazy situation is… they then look up their system and say that they have an appointment on their system for 3pm (it’s now 2:15pm)… So I rush over to the dentist (which ironically is the one I’d called earlier and was told there was nothing til August!!!). No problem at all! So all in all I had the stress and hassle of a system that just doesn’t fit!
When I spoke to the dentist he didn’t really understand why the doctor couldn’t have prescribed the antibiotic, after all it’s the same drug. The dentist just wants to get his waiting lists down and do his job and then silly things like this crop up! Things that stop them getting to help people in a systematic manner. Instead they end up fire fighting the problem which only gets worse as more people cut the queue and emergency spaces are left blank (yep there was at least one of those today!!!) It’s things like this that annoy me! Systems that are made to fit the people rather than the other way round.
Fortunately for me the NHS system has already considered my problem to some degree but I suspect very few people actually know that they can call the their local NHS helpline for Hampshire you need to call 0845 050 8345 and ask how to sort out an emergency appointment. It turns out that there are usually spaces put aside at some dentists for emergency NHS patients in different areas and they can arrange that for you! It’s useful to know especially when you need to get rid of the pain and the shortest waiting list is around 2 months!
Developer Vs IT Pro - Another classic example of where people don’t fit into systems… Recently I was fortunate enough to sign up to the Microsoft Launch event in Birmingham. However I had that difficult problem of choosing which box to tick…. Developer or IT Pro… now how is someone with technical skills in multiple areas supposed to choose? After all I have SQL Server skills and software programming skills… I work as part of a small team and we all have multi-discipline skills… So to me the idea of splitting skills and a title don’t work. I wanted to go to sessions on both tracks… But there was no option for such a thing. To me this is another classic example of a set of people being forced to (mis)fit a system.
The outcome of such things is always tension between the people and the system that they fit into. Whether you are talking NHS or trying to sign up for a technical event with Microsoft. The answer for Microsoft is simple, don’t assume you know your audience, assume anyone signing up would be interested in any of the topics and let them decide for themselves in advance which sessions they go to at an event. Then choose the room placement based on the popularity of the subject being spoken. To me that seems quite logical.
I’m sure there are many more examples of this and I would imagine that this issue will get worse over time with more systems being created to fit assumed work-flows and not properly researched. I also expect that systems will go out of date and over time will no longer fit the process that they are anticipating.
Feel free to share your experiences.
