The door with no handle

Getting treated in the Slovak public health care system is never less than an adventure. Some of the surprises are tiresome; many are just odd.

Waiting rooms are full of patients, illustrative stock photoWaiting rooms are full of patients, illustrative stock photo (Source: Sme)

A lot of stories about Slovak health care dwell on the corruption that is said to infect the system. Mercifully, this is not something I have ever encountered.

But after a recent outing turned into what cyclists call “one of those rides that ends in accident and emergency”, I have had more experience than usual of the parallel universe that is the public health system.

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From my position as a complete ignoramus (Slovak friends are scandalised that I have never taken my own temperature – but where do they teach you this stuff, and what am I supposed to do with the information anyway?), the standard of treatment seems fairly good. At least, I’m still here.

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No need to worry about opioid epidemic in Slovakia

In the emergency department, I saw a doctor quickly – it probably helped that I looked a bit of a mess, and that it was a quiet Sunday afternoon – who sent me off for an x-ray. So far as I can tell, nothing happens in a Slovak hospital without being preceded by an x-ray. The x-ray department is typically at the end of a long and otherwise empty corridor in the furthest corner of the hospital.

Once they’d established that there was nothing seriously wrong with me – or at least nothing that wasn’t wrong already – they reset the bits that were out of place and sent me on my way, with instructions to see my doctor – and, if anything hurt, to take a Paralen(!).

With prescribing practices this stingy there seems, at least, to be little chance of an opioid epidemic in Slovakia.

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