Illustration: Liu Rui

By James Palmer

I've experienced many forms of pain in my life, from accidentally taking a shower in boiling water to kneeing the spines of a sea urchin while swimming.

But short of major bodily trauma, like the time I impaled myself on a tree branch, ear infections have been the worst. It's a stabbing, intimate kind of pain, like having an electric wire tickle your brain.

So with a busted, infected eardrum last week, I was keen to get treatment as soon as possible. Wary of my wallet, however, I decided to take myself off to a large Chinese public hospital, not wanting to splurge on a Western clinic. This turned out to be a mistake.

Even with the aid of a Chinese friend, it took us half an hour just to identify which window to go to get a ticket to see a doctor. Then, after queuing for 45 minutes, we were directed to another window, then to another, then to a different department, then told that the doctor was busy and we should go elsewhere.

Eventually, clutching an assigned number, we arrived at the ear, nose, and throat section, only to find a horde of people pushing in before us without regard to who was first. There were even patients clamoring for attention as the doctor was trying to examine another sufferer.

With the hospital 10 minutes away from closing time, the odds of us getting seen at all seemed low. "Sod it," I said, not looking forward to another night of agony, and went straight to an international medical center, where I was seen in five minutes, sorted out with drugs in 15 - and charged 2,000 yuan ($304).

It's not just the prospect of bureaucratic delays and clamoring hordes that put people off Chinese hospitals. It's the dingy appearance, grim-faced nurses, and general feeling that the patient comes last. All that would be bad enough at any institution, but when you're in pain, it's about the last thing you want to deal with.

I was once puking up my guts with food poisoning and barely able to stand, but when I got to a Beijing hospital I had to take my own blood to the lab, pay separately for it to be tested, and bring the results back to the doctor.

China is still a developing country, as we constantly hear. But none of the problems that drive anyone who can afford an alternative away from Chinese hospitals are ones that require high technology or even greater wages to solve. They're simply a matter of better organization and attitude.

Organizing a proper patient admission system would take fewer people. In the UK, it's handled by one receptionist with a computer, rather than the dozen or so staff it seems to take in China.

And having other people press round the doctor while he's examining you is just ridiculous. The Chinese can certainly be aggressive in trying to be seen, but a solid door, a firm-voiced nurse, and a properly organized queue should be more than enough to keep people out.

Nor does it take enormous amounts of money to paint walls and clean floors, especially in a country like China with cheap labor.

When I got to the Western clinic this time, one of the things that made me feel immediately reassured was the pleasant, bright décor and the neatly arranged reception area.

The smiling receptionists were also a stark contrast to the grim-faced staff I had visited at the Chinese hospital.

This isn't just an image issue. Numerous studies have shown that treatment is much easier, and patients recover faster, when they feel mentally at ease. Patients in some Chinese hospitals end up seeing the doctor stressed, unhappy, and in worse condition than when they arrived.

Of course, making all this work also requires a system that treats everybody equally. If you can turn up at the hospital and backdoor your way to the doctor because you know someone, or because you're an official, or because you hand over a red envelope, then the whole system falls apart.

Fairer treatment and proper organization would cost little and leave everyone feeling better.

The author is a historian and a copy editor with the Global Times. jamespalmer@globaltimes.com.cn