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Talking
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Thank you Päijät Häme Central Hospital - Not such an unpleasant experience
It has been said, that I complain too much. Is this true? Well, my primary source of income is from teaching business English so, if I am rude to a customer or unable to fulfil my obligations as a teacher, I would expect to lose that particular contract; and rightly so. However, in my experience, this is not universally true. There is a lot of bad service and faulty products on the market.
Regular readers of this column will have noticed that I like to complain about my Housing Association. Then there is my television. Less than five years old, it has a faulty starter chip. When I turn the television on, I have between one and ten seconds to select the channel, volume and any other settings I require. After this time the television ‘locks’. Thereafter, the only way to change the channel/settings is to turn the television off and start the process again. My girlfriend actually believes this to be positive as it prevents me flicking through the channels every few seconds!
Apparently, this is a common problem with this particular model and make of television. One of my customers recommended a TV engineer to me. The engineer was one of the nicest men I have had the pleasure to meet. Unfortunately, his diagnosis was not so nice. He confirmed what I already knew. The only way to replace the faulty chip was to replace the entire motherboard. This would cost €250 plus labour. As my television is not digital and not worth €250, I decided against having it repaired and will wait until later next year before buying a new television.
To complain about my car would take the rest of this article. Suffice to say, during the first two years of its life, it had numerous faults, including a missing part! Now four years old, during the last two years, there have not been any major problems.
Surprisingly, many Finnish people know even less Finnish than me. Adjacent to the footpath leading to the front door of my apartment building there is a big sign “huoltoajo sallittu”, “service vehicles only”. Countless inconsiderate people ignore this sign, parking right outside their door, saving them a walk of less than 100 metres from the car park. This is especially annoying late at night when residents are trying to sleep.
However, it is not all doom and gloom. During the recent past, I have read a lot of ‘horror stories’ about the Finnish health care system. These stories detailed long waiting lists, lack of cleanliness and outbreaks of the hospital bacteria MRSA all not helped by lack of investment. Finland’s spending on health care as a share of GDP was 7.4% in 2003 compared with the OECD average of 8.8%.
My own recent experience of Finnish hospitals is far more pleasant. I recently had to undergo a small nose operation at the new day surgery of Päijät Häme Central Hospital. I found the attention to hygiene and cleanliness exceptional. It was spotless.
The operation itself was very minor and involved the shrinking of the lining of my nasal passages. I have never much liked hospitals and was incredibly nervous. Fortunately, every member of staff with whom I had contact had excellent English skills. I was treated professionally and courteously; every detail was explained to me meticulously. In many ways, I was made to feel like ‘royalty’ - the service and help I received was impeccable. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff involved publicly. They made what potentially (for me) could have been a very unpleasant experience totally stress free.
It may be true that the Finnish health care system is under funded, but I maintain that it is excellent value per Euro. Imagine how good it could be with greater investment.
Finally, it may be too early to determine the success of my operation but hopefully, now that I can breathe more freely, I should be able to improve my skiing speed by 10 percent - and that is before any improvement in my technique!
Mike Bangle’s column is published on these pages every second Monday. He is the owner of Talking English language consultancy and can be contacted at mike.bangle(at)phnet.fi
Word List
Note: GNP is bruttokansantuote there is no translation for GDP?
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