To the doctor! (¡Al medico!)

A Catalan tarjeta sanitaria (health service card)

The other day I went to the doctor in Spain for the first time.

It started off similar to what one would expect in Australia: up to the reception desk to announce oneself, give over the tarjeta sanitaria (health service card), get ushered into the sala de espera (waiting room). From here though, things started to deviate from my normal experience.

As in Australia, Catalan GP surgeries are run by private doctors or campanies who charge the public health system for their services. But you wouldn’t guess that from the look of my local surgery.

It was very clean, tidy and pretty modern, but exuded that typically continental-European public building ambience: austere, heavily utilitarian, devoid of creature comforts like magazines or pictures on the walls and everything- walls, seats, floor - a cool pale blue.

On entering the waiting area, an etiquette quickly became evident. In Spain, when you go into a shop or even get into an elevator, people tend to greet each other, with a “hola” or a “buenas dias”.

It turns out it’s pretty much the same at the doctor’s. And as in a shop or a lift, it’s the new entry who must start this off, which I was quickly prompted to do by the other patients looking me right in the eye as I walked in.

Back in Australia or London, I seem to remember always wanting to avoid eye contact with other patients at the doctor’s – and the feeling seemed mutual. Maybe us anglosajones feel that illness is a very private thing and we are a little embarrassed to be out in public (?) It seems that's not the case with Spaniards.

Not long after giving my greeting and taking a seat, the doctor came out and called my name. Brilliant, I thought, it’s my turn already. But as soon as I said “sí”, she called out another name, and then another. Turns out she was telling us our place in the order of things. I was after the person she named after me, who was after the person she named after them.

This roll call, along with all that eye contact, made me realise that the etiquette of the doctor’s surgery in Spain (or at least Cataluña) is pretty much the same as that of the market, which I wrote about some time back: it’s all about everyone being secure that everyone else knows their place in the queue!

After a while, my first and second queue-mates came and went. I stopped reading the newspaper (on my phone) and anxiously waited for the doctor to emerge once again and call my name. But she didn’t. I was confused. What do I do? Do I get up and walk into the consulting room or do I wait?

As I contemplated this dilemma, my name boomed out of the consulting room, in a tone that could only be described as slightly annoyed. Obviously, it was the former.

This was the first taste of what was to be my last lesson in visiting a Spanish GP: “bedside manner”- it’s all very much straight-down-to-business. I don’t remember a smile or even a “what seems to be the problem?”.  I was just shot a look that seemed to say, “start talking”.  

What followed was lot of banging on the computer keyboard as I rattled off my reason for the visit and, without the raising of even one eye from the computer screen, the barking of questions back at me.  I was a little taken aback.

It was all strikingly akin to scenes depicting visits to the doctor I’d seen in Spanish films, which I never quite believed.  I remember asking a Spanish friend about those depictions once and he told me “it’s always been like that here”. I didn’t quite believe him either. I owe him an apology.

Don’t get me wrong, she was very thorough and she gave me quite a lot of time and barked lots of questions about lots of things at me. I certainly felt that I was getting good care.  

It’s just I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in the principal's office back at school!