Mr. Dubé, I will take a few minutes to tell you how my process went when I tried to find a doctor who could see my 6-month-old grandson.
Last Wednesday, my daughter-in-law told me that she was worried about the health of the youngest. Zach has had a cold for three weeks. He doesn’t have a fever, but he’s congested. Nasal secretions are green and thick. Of course, for the past three weeks, she has been giving him instillations three to four times a day to relieve him, but there is no improvement. In addition, she finds that the little one is less playful, more amorphous.
She’s been calling Zach’s doctor’s office for three days. Unfortunately, he is overwhelmed and cannot receive it. With each call, she is advised to go to a walk-in clinic. She’s been trying to get a place in one of these clinics for three days, but it’s always full.
She asks herself: “Should I go to the emergency room? “No,” I tell him. The emergency rooms are overflowing, especially the pediatric ones. And this is not a case for emergencies.
But here’s the problem, the baby needs a medical consultation that she can’t get… So she set her alarm clock at midnight the next night thinking that maybe the clinics were opening. beaches at that time. It sounds weird like that, but, at my medical clinic, that’s how it works. She tried, unsuccessfully, until 4:30 in the morning. Around 6:30 a.m., I took over. Here’s what I did: sitting in front of my computer, my tablet and my cell phone close at hand, I opened three windows on the computer, one on my tablet and one on the cell phone. Then, I contacted the three services that offer walk-in services: Rendez-vous santé Québec, Bonjour-santé and Clic Santé. I kept asking for dates. And I refreshed the pages, and I asked for appointments again. It said: “there are no available beaches”, “the beach is no longer available”, “try again later”, etc. My daughter-in-law was trying to contact her clinic (the line was constantly busy) and she was waiting for 811 to call her back.
Of course, she also had to prepare her eldest for daycare, feed the children, dress the little one, comfort him, instill him, comfort him, dress the older one, brush his teeth, comfort the baby… you get the story ? So, of course, she couldn’t have done what I was doing besides.
Finally, at 8:45 a.m., two and a half hours later, I had an appointment for the little one, in Laval. Take note that we live in Repentigny! So imagine what my daughter-in-law would have done if she hadn’t had a car and a retired mother-in-law who was available and “skilled” in surfing the internet? Well, she would have gone to the emergency room, that’s it.
Do I need to add something? In case you were worried about Zach, he was given antibiotics to treat a bacterial superinfection. He should recover quickly. This was not a case for emergencies…