The idea of securing an advance appointment stands as one of humanity’s notable achievements, yet it loses its luster when urgent care is truly needed.
– I’ll bring my ailing father.
– Did you make an appointment?
There is a sense that certain people in the health system have grown comfortable with a timetable that favors predictability over immediacy. Consider a patient with tonsillitis who is told to wait until next week for a clinic slot. This happens. Schedules that push a sore throat into the distant future resemble sending someone to cook onions during a heatwave. In many cases, individuals end up on a waiting list for conditions that demand urgent attention, while the broader system adapts to a norm that assigns patience as if it were a medical treatment. A normalizer acts as a professional who makes the irrational appear rational. If a child experiences diarrhea, the immediate response should be care today, not a month from now. Diarrhea cannot be reversed by waiting. Yet when a pattern repeats itself, people grow accustomed to it.
-What happens to the child?
– He had diarrhea about a month ago.
-And is he okay now?
Yes, but there is still a wish to remove the memory of that moment from the record.
The dialogue is a dramatic exaggeration, but not far from the exchanges seen in formal political sessions. The absurdity often fades when a practice is repeated enough times. In a sense, water goes unnoticed by fish because it surrounds them completely; so too does the atmosphere of casual delay blend into daily life. Early pressure to reserve hospital emergencies becomes routine once institutions embed the approach. There are those who push for this rationalization through organized campaigns aimed at making it standard practice as quickly as possible. People still arrive at referral hospitals with chest pain without calling ahead, yet after twelve or thirteen hours spent in a corridor, the realization sinks in. They either leave in worse shape or quietly accept the need to book a next contact by phone, as if that is the intended order of things.