My honest review of a hospital

I DELAYED until I could no longer do so to call an ambulance.

It was for Mum who was becoming increasingly distressed.

It was Saturday, which I thought would be a typical day with Mum who, because of her dementia, was prone to bouts of wet coughing due to phlegm in her throat, especially during mealtimes.

But that day, the phlegm build-up was relentless and despite her caregiver Jane’s and my best efforts to soften and loosen the thick mucus with a nebulizer and suck it out with a manual pump, she wasn’t getting better.

By late afternoon, the oximeter showed her blood oxygen saturation level had dropped to 88, which is dangerously low.

I knew I could not put off ma­king that call any longer. Mum was in serious danger.

The reason I tried not to send Mum to the trauma and emergency centre of University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) was because 11 years ago, that was where the ambulance had sent Dad, and we lost him there. I had this insane desperation to keep Mum away from there for fear of the same outcome.

Upon arrival at the centre, Mum was whisked to the resuscitation hall and placed in the very cubicle where Dad passed away. My heart sank.

Fortunately, the place was not crowded at that time and the medical team attended to Mum immediately, attaching a nasal cannula for oxygen, hooking her up to the machines to monitor her vital signs and an intravenous drip.

After several hours of waiting for the results of her blood tests and X-ray, it was determined Mum had a lung infection and needed to be warded.

By that time, it was close to midnight and there was no indication as to when a bed would be available in the geriatric ward.

The staff advised us to go home as outsi­ders were not encouraged to hang around.

At 1.14am, I received a WhatsApp message from the hospital informing me that Mum had been warded, her room number, the visiting hours, what to bring for her, and that a caregiver was encouraged to assist in looking after her. That was impressive.

And that was the start of a six-day stay in perhaps one of the hardest wards in a hospital.

As the name denotes, geriatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care and treatment of old people, and Mum at 91 definitely fit the definition.

I am a senior citizen myself, but the sight of a ward full of sick and old people can be unsettling.

Most of the patients were quiet and often sleeping, but there were a few with Alzheimer’s who had to be watched more carefully and were prone to screaming and shouting. It was not easy for the staff and other patients.

To my relief, Mum was placed in a two-bedder and her bedmate was a woman who, at 92, was even older than her and was suffering from similar medical issues.

We were fortunate to have Jane to look after Mum, and her pre­sence was much appreciated by the nursing staff. We were told by the visiting professor that it was one nurse to six patients.

UMMC is the hospital I know best because since the 1970s it’s been like our family hospital.

As a police officer and his spouse, Dad and Mum were entitled to free healthcare, even after his retirement. My sister and daughter also had surgery there.

As a teaching hospital, it has always had excellent doctors.

But the sad truth of the matter is UMMC has become a confusing maze of a medical complex.

The renovations, expansion and the addition of new buildings seemed to have been done without much thought, proper planning and execution to provide patients and visitors a seamless, efficient, and stress-free experience.

Coincidentally, UMMC on its website is conducting a Patient Satisfaction Study (Kajian Kepuasan Pesakit 2025) on many areas such as parking, signage, call centre service, the food court, cleanliness, toilets, elevators, staircase facilities for the disabled, communication by UMMC staff and the overall experience for inpatient and outpatients.

Fresh from Mum’s hospitalisation and my many visits there, I felt supremely qualified to give my feedback on several concerns.

For me, the multi-storey parking facility that replaced the open-air car park is an example of bad planning and execution at its worst. I am always stressed out dri­ving to find a parking lot.

The ramps are narrow and the many scratch marks are evidence of how many cars have come to grief going up and down those ramps. The upper section of the building has been closed off for years, making me wonder why those floors cannot be used for parking.

Lifts in the parking building are terribly slow and often do not even move.

I often try to take the staircase, and I have to be careful because it’s rather grubby with missing tiles and sometimes no light because the burnt-out bulbs are not replaced for months.

As for the public toilets, I try my best not to use them because they are invariably dirty, wet and often with missing toilet seats, and have no soap and toilet paper.

There is a building that I go through to collect medicines from the outpatient pharmacies that puzzles me.

According to a layout plan I found online, it’s called the Plaza. It has an open-air centre with some greenery in it that seems to serve no purpose.

I was told by a long-serving staff member whom I chatted with in the ward that the Plaza was supposed to be a mini shopping mall with rooms for lectures.

If that’s true, then that plan must have gone south.

If the original aim was a green space, then it should have been designed as an easily accessible place where patients, longing for a respite from their wards, can find a bit of beauty and comfort.

As for access for the disabled, there are wheelchair ramps. However, the heavy doors to many places are not automatic, which means a person in a wheelchair will not be able to enter without assistance.

Even the person pushing the wheelchair will have difficulty keeping the door open so that he or she and the patient can get through.

Overall, I have no complaints with the medical and nursing staff. Mum’s long-time geriatrician, Dr Khor, is a gem. She replied to my frantic WhatsApp messages even though she was overseas.

Doctors making the rounds at the ward would spend a lot of time checking each patient and dealing with their family’s queries.

The nurses were kind and competent, too, with the exception of one who was impatient and careless in how she treated my mother’s bedsores. The physiotherapist was caring, gentle and knowledgeable.

So, too, the speech therapist (who checked on Mum’s ability to swallow) and the dietician.

It shows, thank goodness, that we still have great medical professionals and not all has been lost to Singapore.

That’s the software part, but the hardware is where the big letdown is.

Mum is home now, but she is not completely out of the woods as her dementia has advanced to a stage where her ability to eat and drink without choking is a major concern.

But I pray she will not have to make a return to UMMC any time soon. Still, for all its many shortcomings, it remains our family’s hospital of choice.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.