I’ve written a few mails over the months.
Starting from the head of the department where my child was treated, to the psycho-oncologist who first took me serious enough to reveal that my problems with the organisation weren’t only my problems, to the Chief Digital Officer of the university the clinic is attached to, to the person responsible for university clinics in the state ministry, to people involved in the Health Innovation Hub, to the head of the state ministry.
And in response to that last email I got a phone call today. (not from the first minister of the state, of course, but a public relations person in her state chancellery.)
I read it back after the call and it was short and to the point. I’ve really gone from long and rambling and “yeah but what about innovation?” to “I have insight into how our clinic works, it’s not good, even in the efforts from the federal health ministry to support innovation nobody is behaving as if healthcare was public service, but look, in these countries including Denmark people are treating healthcare as public service and innovating how organisations work from the point of the service user, so why can’t we?” etc.
The person who called me today said “I just wanted to talk to you in person and say we have passed your ideas on to the federal ministry so you don’t just get a rejection email.” But it was a rejection call.
He agreed with me on the basics, that German healthcare doesn’t see itself as public service and that service design from the point of the user is the future, but change just cannot happen. Or at least he, or anyone in the state chancellery, cannot do anything to make it happen.
Of course I kept him on the phone for as long as I possibly could and of course, because I was unprepared and already in Friday afternoon mode on the sofa, I could have done better. I could have asked more and listened more.
But I think I found out something.
The push for change has to come from within the organisations. Never mind that the entire system is built on everyone’s compliance. Never mind that they all go into their career in medicine already fully prepared for having their mental health destroyed by these organisations.
He studied with people like this in Greifswald, so he knows exactly what I am talking about.
After this chat I don’t exactly feel that I have to stop doing this. I am fully entitled, after my experience, to keep trying. As long as I keep some kind of balance (which I do, never more than one or two chats or emails a week, promise.) The thing that the immune system of the organisation does to protect itself, the thing that is the reason all these people either don’t talk to me or only talk to me with a significant amount of fear, has already been done to me.
Also he encouraged me to work a little bit harder to reach
that one person I haven’t tried that hard to reach yet.
Both things I can work with.