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An NZer in a Chinese Hospital

This article is part of a Series written by Students who went on the NZUSA China Delegation. In it, the writer describes a two day stay in a Chinese hospital.

I spent the last two days of my visit to China in the First Municipal People's Hospital of Canton (Kwongchow Number One Hospital). I had temperature and had to spend a day in bed at the hotel, so the interpreters asked me if I wanted to see a doctor.

The rest of the delegation left the hotel at 8 o'clock for the days activities but one of the interpreters stayed behind to take me to the hospital to see a doctor. We left at 9 o'clock and went in a taxi. It was about one mile from the hotel to the hospital and cost 75 cents.(NZ) The taxi driver was female.

When we got to the hospital I realised I had forgotten my wallet and so couldn't pay the taxi fare. The interpreter explained this to the taxi driver and there was no problem about it — I could pay later.

At the hospital we were met at the door by a nurse, who led me straight into a room, where I was to be examined. She was wearing a long white shapeless coat buttoned down the back and with the sleeves rolled up. She also had a man's wrist- watch, as did most of the staff at the hospital. In the room there were two armchairs, a hand- basin, a desk and chair for the doctor to sit at, and a bed.

Outside in the waiting room there were about four people. I was given a form to fill in with name, address, medical history etc., but (in contrast to New Zealand) I didn't have to name my next-of-kin.

The form was in English and Chinese and the interpreter wrote in all the details in Chinese under my answers in English.

A woman doctor than came and asked me what was wrong with me. This took quite a time because the questions and answers, had to go through the interpreter. I had my blood pressure taken and told her I normally had a high blood pressure (having been told this by a doctor in New Zealand).

I was asked what my blood pressure was. I didn't know because, although I was told it was high, I was never told the actual reading. This illustrates one of the main differences between medical care in China and New Zealand. In China people seem to know much more about their own health. In fact, during my stay in the hospital there were lots of questions about my medical history that I couldn't answer because I didn't know enough, and had not been told by doctors when being treated in New Zealand.

Presumably Chinese patients would have known these sorts of details otherwise the doctors would not have asked.

I had my temperature taken, and then two nurses took a blood sample from my finger. Unfortunately by this time the whole experience had become too much for me and I fainted.

When I came to, I was on the bed and the interpreter was reassuring me. A nurse gave me a glucose injection in my wrist, and then two male doctors arrived. I was given a cardiograph, and then put on a stretcher and taken off to be X-rayed.

The attendants who pushed the stretcher were both women. We went out of the building and into what looked like a very large courtyard with lots of trees. There quite a few people sitting around and they stared as I was wheeled past.

The X-ray machine was fairly old and the paint was peeling off it. I had a chest X-ray and was then wheeled outside, where I waited for about ten minutes..

It was decided that I should be admitted to the hospital because I had a temperature of 40° (104° I agreed. It was by then 11 o'clock. I was told to hold onto the side of the stretcher tightly and six nurses carried me up three flights of stairs. I was put in a room by myself. (When I asked the interpreter about this later she said it was because I needed special care and a Chinese patient would have been given a room of his or her own also).

The room had a concrete floor, two armchairs, a small table by the bed with a lamp, a desk, cupboards, a small balcony which looked out on trees and the grounds of the hospital. The bed had a mosquito net. Adjoining the room was a bathroom with bath, toilet and handbasin. The bed was covered with a mat which is what I slept on. The Chinese prefer these in summer because they are cooler (the temperature was about 34°). The nurse showed me the cord to pull when I wanted to call her.

Shortly four doctors came. Two were men and two women. They told me the results of my cardiograph and X-ray. I was asked a lot of questions. All the doctors listened to my chest.

They did this very carefully so as to reveal as little of mea s possible. Although the Chinese are not at all modest in front of people of their own sex (for example in Peking the female hotel staff and our interpreters would shower with the doors to the cubicles open), they are very modest in front of the opposite sex. One of the male doctors stood as far away from me as possible, held the stethescope at arms length and gingerly poked it under my blouse while looking in the opposite direction.

I was told I had been diagnosed as having an upper respiratory infection. (Again this is in contrast to New Zealand where it is often difficult to find out what is wrong, and what your treatment is).

The doctors told me what medication I was going to be given. They left and after changing into hospital pyjamas I was given two injections of antibiotics in my back by a nurse. I was then connected up to a drip mixture of glucose and antibiotics.

I was fed lunch by a nurse. The food was revolting, but this was because it was western food. If I had requested Chinese food (as we had been eating on the rest of the trip) I'm sure it would have been delicious. The western food that the Chinese cook is very sweet, often to the point of being inedible.

After lunch the interpreter went back to the hotel and throughout the afternoon nurses came every half hour to take my temperature and blood pressure. I was given a very large afternoon tea, as well as two further meals.

Throughout that night my temperature was taken at regular intervals. The interpreter returned from the hotel and stayed the night in the hospital in the room next door to mine.

The next morning three of the doctors came to see me and told me my temperature readings. I was told the treatment for that day (another glucose drip) and was asked if I wanted to try some Chinese traditional medicine. I said yes and a short while later the Chinese traditional doctor (male) came to examine me.

The interpreter said traditional doctors make their diagnosis from observing five signs. Three are the eyes, the skin and pulse. The doctor took my pulse and asked me about my symptoms. He then asked if I had consented to having traditional medicine. This would have been about the fifth time I was asked. They seemed very anxious to make it clear that traditional medicine was not compulsory. The medicine arrived later in the day because it had to be cooked up. It tasted like bitter coffee, and there was something solid in the bottom of the cup which I didn't drink.

That day I was given four meals (I tried to avoid the last one by pretending to be asleep but I was woken up by the nurse in order to eat it). I was visited by one of the women doctors twice.

I had an opportunity to talk to the interpreter, and we discussed the members of the delegation. She asked a lot of questions about people living together without being married. In China this would not happen, and she obviously disapproved although did not say so directly. She did say, however, that one of the members of the delegation who was married was "different from the rest of you. I think he must have had a good upbringing".

She also told me about the sorts of things she liked doing in her leisure time. She enjoyed reading books in English, but not American novels in which the speech is written in slang because she found this hard to follow. She said she read mainly novels but she must also have read other sorts of books, because one day she asked me to explain a list of colloquial expressions she had read in a book but not understood.

The first one was "Hitler found himself out on a limb", and the other ones referred to the Third Reich and the war. When she was at school she was told she could learn either English or Korean but chose English because "It is a nice language, I like it.

Another activity that she liked was shopping. When we got to Shanghai after Peking she told me she liked Shanghai because the shopping was better, there was more variety. When talking about shopping in the hospital she told me she had eleven blouses, six short sleeved and five long sleeved. She thought this was terribly funny. She kept laughing and shaking her head because she had bought all these clothes when it wasn't really necessary.

She also told me about where she lived in Peking. She shared with some other young women from her work. (She is twenty six). Although her parents lived in Peking, and she often went to visit them in the weekends, she preferred living with the women form her work because it was better companionship.

That night I was told that, although I wasn't completely cured, I could leave the hospital the next morning and join the rest of the delegation as we were due to leave China for Hong Kong. I paid the bill NZ$33.92. An amount was deducted for food because I had paid for food at the hotel but had not been there to eat it. The receipt was divided into the following items : Registration, Medicine, Room, Operation Therapy, X-ray, Blood Transfusion and Board.

The next morning before I left the doctor came to see me and gave me instructions She told me my temperature (it was still a bit high) and told me to rest for the next few days. She gave me some cough medicine and a small packet of pills which were the rest of my course of antibiotics. I took one more cup of the traditional medicine. The nurses came in to say goodbye to me, and at the entrance of the building I met the traditional doctor. We waved to each other and then I left in a taxi.

I feel that I was cared for extremely well in the hospital and would have no reservations about being admitted to a hospital in China again if the need arose.

— Amanda MacDonald.