Quality

Patient is under the care of the Head of Department, the team registrar is known to be technically competent. A nurse paged you on a early Sunday afternoon and said "patient wants to see you, she's in pain".

You want to sort it out over the phone, but then you smells something fishy, the patient is 23. Instincts tell you a 23 year old girl, "normally", have better things to do then complaining, so, you decided to have a look for yourself.

You then learn that her pain actually hasn't change much for the last few days. There appears to be no "acute" medical problem per se. But she hasn't been walking secondary to her pain in the knees for the last few weeks.

The mother then tells you although this young girl has been review by various specialists during her hospital stay; she, the mother, hasn't had a chance to talk to any of them.

It was probably the mother who asked her to be reviewed on a Sunday afternoon, when she is there.

At the end, all parties agreed let's not play around with adding in new medications, on this Sunday afternoon. You reassured the mother that you'll make a note asking the team to call her, on her cellphone, for a family meeting or something like that.

How do you measure Quality of Care? How can one define and, expects, and be expected to provide quality care given the current provision of acute inpatient service?