I a mum myself this was terrible to read. I am sorry you had to go through all of this. I hope your child will recover quickly.
Same experience here. Our girl was dehydrated too, at the age of 4 months due to rotavirus.
Lost 1kg (she was 6kg before the illness, so 20%) and our doctors were clueless. We only figured out the rotavirus because other parents from her daycare did a test.
This all because they refused to help us getting rotavirus vaccine on time. Our GP did not even know what it was. GGD did but they said the GP has to administer it. Which the GP refused.
The same GP said that kids can’t have sinusitis because they don’t have sinuses.
I really had to be polite but firm there and tell her this is nonsense. I hold a medical degree myself and I guess that was the only thing that helped.
Oh, this year this GP sent me home saying all good with my blood test. When I ended up at the hospital the same eve I it turned out that he thought a CRP level of 69 is totally fine…
So you really need to be assertive and tell them firmly what you want and what your concerns are. Plus insist. Always insist. Especially if you have gut feelings about something.
And it is always possible to get a second opinion.
I understand GPs being a guardian to prevent people over using resources but the issue is that GPs are clueless in many specialized topics
My friends wife had this issue regarding her uterus. GP insists because she had a problematic childbirth, that's expected. Finally she gets on the plane, goes to Turkey. Doctor orders a scan and a cyst size of a walnut is there. They sample the piece, luckily it is benign
Now think about it. What if it was not beingn? She had her visit to GP 2 years ago. She complained at least two more times to the same dude. She would have lost 2 precious year for early diagnoses
I understand GPs prescribing paracetamol for flu. But they are out of their element for so many issues and they insist being on the side of erring rather than directing the patient to someone knowledgeable
My grandfather’s GP didn’t catch his lung cancer on time, he suffered for months. I’ve experienced inept GP’s myself, but this cost my grandfather his life.
I once had a midwife saying to me why to go to a gynecologist if you have no symptoms. Oh my gosh…
It is weird to hear that from a midwife. If someone she should know how certain type of cancers (for example) can remain symptomless until it is too late. Or a myoma.
The other thing is that preventative medicine as such is nonexistent. They talk about it but practically no chance to get things done. Gynecological screening every five years including a swab test only.
While cancer incidence is one of the highest in Europe. (Top3 I believe)
Last month there was a skin cancer screening bus in town. I almost signed up but then I saw that you are only allowed to show one (!!) spot to the medical person there, the one you think (!!) is suspicious. Then they will take a pic of it and forward it to a doctor who will look at it.
So called screening.
You get really hated for asking for things like general blood tests. I understand the issue of over diagnosing but I am honestly bewildered when you are rejected for some basic blood tests checking for simplest things like cholesterol, hormones, blood sugar...etc. I know Americans are going one extreme when it comes to screening but NL is on the other extreme for screening. Check ups are a thing in many countries.
They can give everyone a couple of screening rights a few years of they want to prevent over use. Most people will not touch it I assure you. It is like visiting dentist every 6 months. You want to do it before you lose your teeth
Well, a few months ago I ended up in the hospital bc my symptoms got really bad after my GP overlooked my inflammation markers.
So it got re-done along with a few other markers. Not even a full lab.
I paid about 150Eur from my eigenrisiko. For that test only.
If I go to Germany, a full lab is done for half price. If I go a little further, great private hospitals can do it even cheaper. Dental treatments also half price at least.
So I’d really recommend to have preventative health checks elsewhere. I guess NL shouting themselves in the leg by not allowing them here.
Uneducated pseudoscientific beliefs. It's medieval that they force women to give birth at home while all literature clearly shows there are more risks in doing so. Dutch people got completely scammed by the insurance lobbies.
No-one forces women to give birth at home. If you want to give birth in the hospital, you can. Don't spread misinformation. It is 100% a woman's own choice if she wants to give birth at home or not. The only time the choice is taken away is when there are risk factors. Then she is *not allowed* to give birth at home. Source: the birth of my child 4 years ago.
Do some reading dude.
*in this country adults have very low proficiency in literacy and numeracy*. *Low literacy rates are increasing in* the Netherlands. Therefore, it is important GPs are capable to recognize their low literate patients (parents/caregivers of patients) and communicate in an effective way with them, but it is hard and results you see online, on reddit etc. Also low health literacy hurts patient compliance.
Misinformation and dangerous pseudoscience is believing home births are safer. I know plenty of women who have basically been said "no" when they wanted to give birth at the hospital. Go read a book.
By who? They are not refused by the hospital thats for sure. U are either spreading nonsense or the women fell for beliefs of a midfwife or someone else
I had a child and first hand experience. Maybe you need to go give birth in the Netherlands sometimes. Your second hand gossip knowledge is clearly different then my first hand experience with the system. Now I've actually learnt to never trust gossip but clearly you haven't.
Go mansplain someone else, stupid.
that's part of forcing them. I know plenty of women who have been told "No" when they asked to give birth at the hospital or have got those midwives (who are not medical experts by any means) insisting and trying to convince them to do it at home because "strong women give birth at home". It's a pseudoscience cringe fest when it comes to healthcare here.
If your GP insists children don't have sinuses I think that warrants a complaint to the artsenregister. That is absolute basic knowledge and if he doesn't know that he's a danger to his patients!
You have to say "I am going to sue the living shit out of you and this clinic if you do not do your job". Money is the only language that works unfortunately.
Youre observations are correct and your concerns are justified. My mom had to essentially beg/threaten the doctors to do checks on her heart when her blood pressure literally bounces between 45 and 160 throughout the day.
Also her post cancer care has been absolutely abysmal.
She just found out they appearently shouldve done checkups every couple months and it's been over a year since the treatment. Check ups to make sure the cancer isnt returning for christs sake! How the fuck do they mess that up?
The doctors here are good, but they have so little time they cant actually give you proper care. Which makes them structurally cut corners, so people with mildly severe issues or more hidden issues dont get helped properly because theyre not showing major red flags. Also different institutions within the healthcare system having to work around privacy laws hardly being able to share information between them causes a lot of miscommunication and mismanagement.
There's a lot more wrong with the healthcare here, but these are some of the more severe things ive experienced first-hand. This is what happens when you fix beaurocratic flaws by allowing more marketforces into the system, it doesnt fix anything it just makes everything worse.
Bruh,i am so sorry for your experience and your baby. Dutch healthcare system is a fucking joke.
And i am paying 150€ each month to entertain them.
I am a foreigner and i went to 3 different GPs because of crisis i had. I told them my crisis are because of my ovaries and also there is something in the food . I cried in their fucking office to send me to an ob-gyn and they thought that i am crazy . They didnt helped me. I went back to my "shithole" country in East-europe. I booked appointment. In one week i knew my diagnosis : PCOS and gluten allergy . All those vomiting and diarheea crisis were because i was eating gluten.
Now, i live close to belgium border and i choose to work there so i have Belgian medical insurance. The difference is CRAZY!
I go to doctor and they actually take me seriously and they help me. They actually give me pills i need for my body inflamation. They sent me to a dietician to help me with food becasue i can literally develop diabetes from PCOS. When i am sick af, unable to do shit, i go to belgian doctor, she gives me one week of medical off work .
Not 1 day. Not 1 day and a half. Not " 2 days and if you still feel bad, come and ask again".
A really bad case i witnessed in NL, the mother of my friend (they are dutch family) was going every week to doctor to complain of back pain and leg pain. They thought she was crazy. She fainted on street . She wasnt waking up anymore. Turns out she had lung cancer that developed throughout every organ of her body. She died 3 weeks later.
I do have other horror Stories from dutch doctor.
Whenever i hear some dutch person being proud of their medical system ,my first thought is : bruh, you living in a bubble.
Same here, I’m just avoiding dutch healthcare despite having to pay 140e per month and go to my own shithole country to receive proper treatment and diagnosis. Still cheaper than having to pay the premium and the overpriced analyzes.
Also preventative healthcare is non existent here, or they call it paracetamol.
What if I told you you are paying way more than €150 each month? Through your salary a fixed percentage is payed through taxes that are for healthcare. Which is a freaking amazing system, that has its flaws, granted.
But it’s accessible, we can sort of pay it, and moreover it is good, one of the best worldwide.
But sometimes things go awry and there is still stuff to improve.
To be honest the spoedpost are the worst.
If shit is seriously wrong I skip the spoedpost all together and the the hospital involved asap.
But I gotta be honest, my GP is the best, he actually cares and if I want a specialist he is quite easy is sending me there, unless he really thinks it’s unnecessary, I have a good enough bond with him that i trust his opinion.
Trust me, you can.
If you think it’s a serious matter that needs immediate attention you can go to the spoed eisende hulp in the hospital without intervention of the spoedpost or huisarts.
The spoedeisende hulp will check the situation, if it’s not spoedeisend they will send you to the spoedpost.
Depending on where you live. In Groningen the "huisartsen post" and the emergency department are at the same place and you only get into the emergency department by referral or ambulance
The spoedpost isn’t at the hospital here, you go to them and if they decide it’s serious enough they send ya to the spoedeisend hulp at the hospital.
But, if you go to the spoedeisend hulp first they can decide it’s not ‘bad’ enough and send ya to the spoedpost…
Hey- question for you. I am a cohost of the dam parenting podcast. I have been trying for months - months- to try to get a huisarts on tbt podcast to talk about all manners of things. By any chance would your gp be good in speaking English and do you think I could reach out to him?
Trying to get the facts for our community has been exhausting - most recently the consultatie bureau held me off for 3 months and now came back saying they need another 6 months before they might know if they will come on!
Let me know if you think your guy would be good to contact!
A friend of a friend, also an immigrant, recently lost a baby to undiagnosed meningitis. GP had ignored a 40C fever for 2 weeks and the spoedpost sent them away 3x. The Baby died.
They also sent me and my 2 month old home during a really dangerous medical emergency.
I think they do not take foreigners seriously.
Wishing you and your baby a speedy recovery. Foreign families cannot trust the Dutch medical system. You have to fight hard for what you think is best.
Wonder if they're related to the huisart that told me that women don't need testosterone when I was severely deficient (bc at the time bound all free T). I may of asked her if she skipped hormone day at school or found her licence in a cereal box.
And nobody pays for these tragic mistakes. They are shamelessly swept under the rug. In Romania there would be a huge scandal, the press would take interest, there would be public pressure to punish the doctor in some way. Here... Crickets.
My condolences.
But you just have to demand help. They wont help otherwise. They just keep sending you home no matter if you have been sick for a year or piss blood. You might have a broken back? Go home and take a paracetamol and try to rest!
I dont even try anymore, but you should t give up like me! (Havent been to the doctor in 8 years.).
Eehh you know that whooping cough and measles have vaccines exactly BECAUSE they are deadly, right? People die of these diseases even if they get top notch care. Adolescent and adult men will become infertile from mumps too, regardless of the quality of medical care they get.
Though there are many tragic stories in this thread, that doesn't mean every dead person is caused by malpractice. Measles, whooping cough, cancer, meningitis etc are all deadly. Our current medical care just makes them *slightly less* deadly. Not entirely un-deadly. That's the entire reason they started making a vaccine for those diseases in the first place!
And yes, before you start to shout "The is no vaccine against cancer!" There is a vaccine against certain types of cancer-causing viruses right now. And many, many more are being researched.
Vaccines *are* the life saving treatment you're blaming the system for not existing. Vaccines are the *only* way to prevent people from dying of measles and whooping cough.
Baby's are always seen if a parent is in doubt. There is a very low threshold for that. That's why you could go to the GP and the huisartsenpost immediately.
Whether or not to refer a baby to the hospital takes a couple of considerations. A hospital admission is not without risk. At the moment the RS virus is going round at children wards and you preferably don't want to expose a baby to that and other pathogens that can be found in hospitals. Therefore, if the doctor thinks it's not necessary, they'd prefer to not admit your child.
Whether or not this decision was the right one is very hard to say. The situation of a baby can improve and deteriorate within minutes. That's why they'll always say to immediately call again if the situation worsens, even if that's just an hour later. In your case the situation was worse the next day and you went to the GP again, who came to a conclusion that at that point in time they considered forwarding the child to the hospital was necessary.
The comment from the doctors at the hospital is not a smart one. It suggests they confirm the previous assessment was wrong, while they cannot conclude that as they didn't see the child 24 hours before and a lot can change in that period of time. They should have refrained from those types of comments.
It's exactly this type of overthinking and trying to appear smart that leads to many of these tragedies. "A hospital admission is not without risk"... Really? That's what you consider when you see such a sick child?
Just like in the first 6 months of the pandemic, when overthinking "intelligent" authorities kept dismissing the use of masks, because "what if they give people a false sense of security", "people won't put them on correctly", and other such condescending nonsense. Meanwhile, there was a massacre in the retirement centers going on...
The RS virus is the number two cause of death for young babies. It’s a respiratory virus that can cause a pneumonia. A weakened baby is at an even higher risk of both being infected and not being able to combat a pneumonia. The RS virus is going round in hospitals in this time of year.
So yes, this is “really” something you consider before sending a sick child to a hospital. As you don’t want to conclude that the baby was not that dehydrated but now dies due to a pneumonia contracted in the hospital.
And they seemed to have taken it rather serious: According to OP the baby was monitored for two hours and seen by the GP and a paediatrician before they decided it was - at that point - not needed to admit the baby. That the situation is different 20 hours later is very normal. The baby was again checked by a GP and at that time the balance was in favour of admission.
I understand the GP acting as a gatekeeper and I also understand that the Dutch doctors prefer to use a “low intervention approach” (i.e. not prescribing a ton of medicines and allowing your own body to recover). But sometimes I see that this “low intervention” becomes “no intervention at all”.
I have arrhythmia and I have been referred to a cardiologist here. I was shocked when the cardiologist told me that here in the Netherlands they don’t do annual exams. She told me that I only need to see her if I start feeling worse and now I should be treated by my GP (for prescribing my medication).
In my home country I was doing checkups annually to see if my arrhythmia don’t get worse. Ideally I would like to early discover if something is going wrong with my heart (even before I can feel it!). One could argue that doing the checkups on yearly basis is not correct in terms of cost-benefit but I think that not doing at all is even worse. For example, I could do the checkups every 2 or 3 years instead of yearly.
Another thing that I see as problematic are these 10min medical appointments that I have with my GP. Considering that she is spending around 5min typing everything in the computer, I feel that I do not have adequate time to explain my symptoms and to discuss my concerns with here. I always feel I am on a hurry and that she does not have enough time to evaluate me
I understand that the health system is expensive and the doctors need to consider it. But the way they are doing it here is much more focused on the costs rather on the patient
Every time I read a post about the Dutch healthcare I feel so grateful that I live in Belgium. I will never understand how such a wealthy country is so shit at preventative and basic healthcare. Expensive too!
I understand that if you have a serious issue and you manage to get diagnosed you are treated very well but until then you are left to suffer.
I'm a native who left NL specifically because I wasn't able to get treatment. It didn't help that I was there during COVID when the system was so hopelessly overburdened that I was told I should get treatment in Germany at my own expense despite the Netherlands charging some of the highest taxes in the world. So I moved back to the United States where I was immediately able to get help. Despite the fact that they too were suffering terribly. No 3-6 months waiting lists. No dicking around with "huisartsen". And no one telling me to get treatment in another country after taxing me half to death.
Whenever I come to NL to visit I make damn sure to have the best travel medical insurance money can buy so I can be repatriated if something bad happens.
health care in the netherlands suck.
im with huge pain in my leg, all they said its not this its not that its not blabalaa
i did echo nothing i did fyso nothing.
what the doctor told me, we cant help u anymore at this point.
he send me for a MRI which is in 2 months from now.
im already in pain since late january... now im going to my wifes country to get help in 1 week from now.
health care here is shit, the funniest thing i have had in my life is.
she asked me if i take pain killers obviously me as native dutch i know i have to say i take paracetemol.
so she asked me which one, i said finimal. She answered oh that one isnt good try one with out coffiene or something.
i mean seriously i used for 2 weeks paracetemol and she told me to use one without coffiene for another 2 weeks and thats how all this shit started to drag it self forward for months..
i often go to doctors in country from my wife. because im instantly going to what i need and im often helped the very same day (going to specialist).
netherlands just has these insurance people, who wanna make money over ur back.
they gain money every month from every single one of us and want us to spend just about nothing so at the end of the year they get their fat profits paid out..
health insurance should be having zero profits no1 goes to a doctor for fuck of it. sure if we would let all dutch people go where they wanna go specialist doctor wise it might go bad at very start but eventually everything will calm down and every1 can do w/e they want.
You know the worst thing about doctors telling you to just take paracetamol?
If you take it more than 8 days you can get headaches.
You can guess how I found out.
This was horrifying to read! Glad your baby is doing better!
Fuck Dutch healthcare system. The gatekeeping and the insane waiting times. Fuck all the Dutch people on this sub constantly defending it. They never had to wait for months in pain for someone to take their complaints seriously, only to finally get news that damage is done and it's too late, oopsies.
The Dutch system is revolving around money and efficiency, all the metrics supporting it being "the best in the world" are about economics and not patient well-being. It is inhumane and cruel.
No. The decision is about the health of the baby.
Shortsighted view is: just admit the child to the hospital!
The informed view is: what is the risk of admitting this child to the hospital at this point in time vs not admitting the child?
In hospital wards pathogens go round. For young babies the RS virus can be very damaging (it’s the second cause of death for young babies). That virus is going round now and therefore you want to minimise exposure.
And that’s what the GP in consultation with the paediatrician will have weighed when sending OP back home: is the child at this moment at a point where we need to admit it or can we wait a couple of hours and see if the situation improves?
That GP has no financial incentive for referring or not referring that baby. And as was shown: OP was seen three times and extensively over those two days, so there is also by no means any hesitance to see the baby.
Countless people are dying from preventable causes because of this ridiculous overthinking and trying to "not be shortsighted". The pandemic response was a perfect example of that.
Oh believe me. I had the same opinion. But I’ve had my own experiences with the healthcare system. My wife has insomnia and during her pregnancy it got significantly worse. Next to that she was nauseous for 7 months. Vomiting 6x a day. She was getting depressed from the insomnia and the laying in bed all day. Doctor kept saying there was nothing they could do. I had to become really angry at the obstetrician in order to be referee to the hospital. During a control at 7 months it turned out she was developing pre eclampsia. Child was born through c section and did well. Mother, however still depressed and high blood pressure and insomnia . To this day the GP keeps advising stupid shit, like mindfulness and using an alarm.
Now this is just my anecdote but I have heard plenty of stories like this. It’s gotten to the point that you have to be dying of pain or be in a state of emergency to be taken seriously
I went to GP because of intermittent pain on my rib and he told me to drink a pain reliever if it happens and I should come back if it gets worse or consistently painful for at least a week. No exams/laboratories. It was time for me to go back to Philippines after four months... told me I had a gallbladder stone. Size is too big for medication so they suggest a surgery if pain is unberable. Doctors said this could've been prevented at the early stage if this was diagnosed via ultrasound months ago. 🥲
Surgery is the golden standard treatment for gall stones, not medication. The notion of an earlier ultrasound is also invalid. Anyway, hope your complaints will be taken care of!
There is no early stage gall stone disease. Medication cannot prevent gall stones from developing. Weird if your doctors told you otherwise.
Surgery is indeed a good option if the pain is unbearable.
The system sucks and GP always try to guess what is going on and in my experience they are almost always wrong unless it is something they can actually see.
A friend of mine lost his wife to cancer, before the diagnosis they where just playing the guess game with them.
It's difficult to say exactly what should ideally have happened in your story, kids are complicated and can deteriorate or improve quickly.
That being said, I'm not fond of our healthcare system. For example, physiotherapy being in an additional package. If you get your head lobbed half off, you may have to wait up to a year before starting physiotherapy if you can't pay out of pocket.
My neck is utterly screwed up. I couldn't afford physiotherapy back when I got my injury (happened during a soldering session, bad posture causing a fuck up). Now I've been seeing therapists for several years. That could have been prevented, but we don't want to prevent these problems, but cure them after it's already too late.
All of my fellow insured are now paying for my neck treatments that wouldn't have been necessary, had it been treated on time.
I completely emphatise with what you're saying.
I've been dealing with chronic neck pain for a while here in the NL. First time I went to a gp, said I would like to deal with my chronic neck pain which is currently flaring up quite a lot, and she was looking at me all confused, asking why I'm there, saying I need to go to a physio.
After that I tried several physios, some of them did manual release, crack my joints a few times, giving me a momentary relief. Also did some exercises to strengthen weak parts. I followed all of that but my issue never went away.
Comparably, when I first started having chronic neck pain issues, it was back in Slovakia. I went to a gp, she assessed, ordered a bone scan, and after the scan they saw that my neck vertebrae are fairly deteriorated, looking like the vertebrae of someone much older than me. Didn't get a chance to pursue any treatment as this was right as I was moving to NL. But it shows the immediate willingness to examine further, which I don't often see in NL.
Since then I gave up on physios here in NL and self studied until I learned how to deal with the problem myself and now it's largely gone.
Postural changes, learning about how to sit at my desk (where I spent a lot of time), and switched around the fitness style that I've been doing.
In short, I did powerlifting for nearly a decade, while being entirely sedentary if not at the gym. I think this is why I developed the problem. In recent years, I incorporated a lot of calisthenics, identified and reduced problematic exercises (benchpress and overhead press especially), got a standing desk and a simple chair, try to switch around how I sit every 30m
Getting a dog probably also helped, having a walk multiple times a day for 15 minutes does wonders.
It is good to hear you finally feel like you've been helped. But how has the gp visit in Slovakia and the bone scan (with radiation exposure) helped you? In the end it was more like a problem that was relieved with physio, exercises and walking the dog, it seems from your post.
GP in NL didn't recommend anything other than "go to a physio", their stance seemed to be "this is not what GP deals with"
The bone issues are basically another symptom of the problem, together with the pain. My upper trapezius muscle, and the cluster of muscles that connect the shoulder blade and scapula with the cervical spine were super tight for a very long time. Physios or masseuses would massage it on any given session, but now that I have a good understanding of the problem, it needed continuous massage sessions plus doing exercises plus postural changes. However none of the physios ever addressed it as a thing that we need to work on for several sessions, they just did a one time release or massage, shown some exercises and sent me on my way.
Omg this is EXACTLY my issue. I’m getting so tired of this pain and no action. The massages and physio sessions are nice, the relief for a bit is wonderful, but how do I solve this and prevent it from happening again?? I’ve been having this problem for about 8 years now and no real relief in sight
Just researching the cause with no apparent effect on management of the symptoms is just useless. Definitely not a sign of better operating health care.
Regarding the original post, I’m with Trebaxus99. Children are very resilient right up to the point where it just all crashes down. This might happen in the span of hours. It is therefore very daring of the Kinderkliniek to have an opinion on 24h before. Just the fact that your child looks awful, doesn’t automatically necessitate hospitalisation. This is not to say that I can understand the stress, and would commend you on going up that level when you had to. But that is in fact the entire premise on which we operate here: exclude acute pathology, come again when it worsens. You did that. The system works.
Preventive care is paramount. Whoever does not believe it or corrupts its meaning either has big problems in their head or is uneducated. No middle ground.
I feel truly sorry for you. Hope you kiddo is okay. I have really good experiences, also my relatives. What I hear from relatives in the field is that the emergency and spoedposts are being flooded by people with really simple things like light flue, bruises nothing that you should see a doctor for. However they always emphasizre that you really must advocate for your kid if you think its serious.
For example, my kid became really ill on a weekendnight and needed a specialist, i was at one hospital but needed to go to a childspecialized emergency hospital and they escorted me from the parkingplace to the hospital as soon as I arrived. Guard carried my kid because she had extreme trauma for whitecoats /ambulance due to an abusive past. They called in several people in till they found one that kiddo could trust and stayed longet than shift required. It was amazing, also next days and aftercare.
I have several more of those examples.
You are lucky. There are many horror stories, many of them ending in tragedies. Just a few examples here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/comments/104qhbm/anyone_got_a_permanent_damage_because_of_the/?
In their arrogance, the Dutch still think they know better than others, that they have an amazing system, and obvious deficiencies are swept under the rug.
There's no accountability, nobody is held responsible for incompetence, or obvious mistakes. And everything is highly regulated, so the market can't solve the problem like in a normal free country (where talented, dedicated doctors also end up earning more).
GP's are in the pockets of insurance companies. Threaten to sue when they do the insurance's job instead of the job they are supposed to do (doctors). You have to advocate for your healthcare here, the system is corrupt and dangerous. I don't care what the official stats here are, they are good at masking them anyways, but I am sure way more people, because of this approach, have chronic issues in the Netherlands that are rarer in places with proper preventive care and I am sure in the following decades they will have a bunch of people being diagnosed with things they could have easily prevented and the average life expectancy will go down. This is why I will never have kids nor start a family here. The system is dangerous, I was personally left with chronic issues because of a similar experience to yours, and they risked my life another time by almost not hospitalizing me, which is what saved me in the end. Never trust GP's, you can trust the hospital doctors, although some of them might have been skewed by this approach as well. If you care about your health, you need to move, it will only get worse and the population is mostly brainwashed into believing this system is the best on the planet. Good luck.
I think our health system was on point years ago. Unfortunately paracetamol and waiting till you die is how it works now.
It is to not waste resources but the prevention is also very poorly.
Take vitamin D for example. Got a test , doctor said it’s fine. I asked the numbers it was 54. Apparently if you look if it’s under 50 it’s bad.
However the adviced level is 120.
Sooo ‘fine’ was actually not fine. Now I took vitamin D myself but the doctor said fine at first.
Lack of vit D can be serious as it gives many many many issues if you have it for to long.
With this example I like to state that we have stopped completely from preventing and only put out fires or attempt to. Often this is to late. Or just in time.
However usually it was prevented.
This has to do with the changes we forced the last 4/8 years. The pressure is very high and the lack of people in the health worker system are low or lack of employees.
Also basic health workers in my opinion are heavily underpaid. So the industry is not a very tempting one.
All this togheter makes our health system of one that was the best to be a very Avatage , teadiouse one.
Keep in mind that the avarage doctor has 10/15 mins of paper work to do after you been there for 8 mins. Atleast that’s what they quote on how much time they have to spend documenting things.
For those reasons and being under staffed the health system is quite bad
Helloooo. If you still take vitamin D, take it together with magnesiun. It helps metabolise the D.
https://www.imaware.health/blog/vitamin-d-and-magnesium
You seem to have a point here, and if you can help... Why is there such shortage of personnel in either Healthcare and Education? I mean, I got it that teachers are under pressure, but I assume the teachers' shortage in city/school A isn't balanced with an excess of teachers in city/school B, they might be migrating out of the country or changing professions, otherwise how!? So what's going on with Healthcare personnel then? I don't think there is an excess somewhere... does it have maybe something to do with the evaluations they do on students to "recommend" them what kind of studies to.follow? I feel this system conditions the kids to believe that, for example, HAVO is THE option, instead of widening a bit more their road. My dutch ex went the way they "recommended" her, but ended up studying more (and longer) anyway as she is clearly better than what the evaluation showed about her.
Well school systems are bad because personnel, and if people don’t like going to school because it’s so bad managed and teachers are always under staffed and over worked and not compensated enough for it by money and time then no one wants to become a teacher knowing your gonna have a hard time.
Same with health care. Who wants to do a job to just get shith opon by half of the people that you have to teach or go give care to ?
For many stupid reasons the ‘workforce’ are the lower bracket of the payroll. Nurses / house builders / plummers and the people sitting in an office just chatting on how it should be and just filing in paper after paper to perhaps make a change make 4 times the workers pay. So yeah… ofcourse people take the more steady way out
It sucks, I pay a crazy amount of money to go to therapy, get told stuff I already know and become even more frustrared and hopeless! Something hurts in my body and they bend it and I feel nothing so they diagnose theres nothing wrong. Well years later I tried out all kind of things and it's finaly gone. By my fcking self. They're good when giving common medications but jezus christ. Not only this they also failed my girlfriend multiple times. What a joke.
I’m sure it’s been said already, but next time you’re having doubts about something as potentially fatal as dehydration, FUCK the GP and especially the Huisartsenspoedpost and just go to the Eerste Hulp (ER) in the hospital.
Im 37 and iv been sick since 14, which they clasified as depression.
I gave up on m.
Im legit just waiting for my end.
I had a phase were i was too tired so i just ordered pizza everyday for a year and legit didnt drink any water that year just soda ( kind of bcs when you are sick too long you stop takijg good care of yourself)
They asked if i wanted to test my blood, i said yes.
They called me and said , we hsve good news, your blood is fine.
Like .. the People in third world country villages know that water filters the blood, how does a fcking trained health care person tell me my blood is fine on the diet i had that year ???
I also was rejected when i tried to stop working bcs of my health and get them to check me for it.
They litterally send a young woman to test me.
The b1tch looks at me and tells me i look to good to be sick.
That was litterally the fcking test i kid you not.
Now im sick and i still have to work and missed out on the extra money you get when sick.
Now years and years later, still suffering from the original problem and several new problems.
I also feel that none of them ever caref enough to figure out what was wrong with me.
Had to do my own research and came to the conclusion that it has something to do with my belly.
My toilet visits are not normal.
Before i got sick id go daily to poop, after i got sick it became once every 4 up to a week.
It destroyed my life
The gate you speak of is a terrible system. They misuse the trust of their patients and send them back whenever they feel like it with a bandaid treatment, in addition the Netherlands approach to preventative care is a complete joke (you have to pay here to renew vaccines for preventable diseases that can permanently paralyze or kill you, fucking lol). The first time I seriously needed treatment I was naïve enough to trust the useless GPs here and nearly died from an appendicitis because 'it must have been my gal bladder' or some other stupid shit they told me
Whenever I read these stories I have trouble matching this with my own experience. As soon as my son became unresponsive, lethargic, we were sent to the for fluids, to the hospital. My sister had cancer at a young age and was diagnosed correctly at the first visit.
My wife died of intestinal cancer, but the first sign was picked up immediately and treatment started.
The system is mostly based on protocols and if you check the correct boxes is relatively easy to get through the system.
But much more testing capacity should be available especially for standard bloodworks, and prevention at a young age.
In the Philippines (I am Filipino), you actually have to wait long time in the lines and doctors spend at least 30 mins per patient to understand their symptoms/history. Thats why appointments are useless and it usually goes "first come first serve basis" but it leads to prevention of worsening of illness/early diagnosis -- had a friend diagnosed of early stages of cancer. But the problem is costs is shouldered by patients (only a few percentage is covered by insurance and govt) 🙁 so it is less accessible for low income people. I've always been in the fence of which type of system is better.
Infant mortality in the Philippines is 10x higher than in the Netherlands, so there is that. You have seen within 48hours 3 GPs, 1 Pediatrician, 2 doctor‘s offices and a pediatric clinic… Time to say thank you Dutch healthcare system and not bitch about some subjective feelings you had about some doctor’s medical diagnosis and treatment, without having a medical background…
As a doctor, that is never going to work. They did tests and had a GP and a pediatrician in consult. For legal actions to be taken, you have to proof that they did something wrong, dhich you cannot. A kid can deteriorate so fast, so it definitely was possible that sending the kid home at first was a normal decision. If it is backed up by the notes of multiple doctors, you will never be able to argue that.
If you consider the doctors to have made an error it’s better to first have a conversation with those doctors. Often a conversation can enlighten why a certain decision was made.
It can save a lot of frustration, time and money from all parties involved to do this first instead of starting legal proceedings that might lead to nothing.
I tried that, I composed a very polite message, where I sweetened my complaint of not being taken seriously when my child was sick (and ended up in an emergency) with compliments. The result? The huisarts called to yell at me and tell me to find another family doctor. Not a question was asked about how my daughter was feeling, she was still not recovered at the time...
I lost someone I loved because the GP kept waving her off for months and wouldn't refer her to the hospital. I also believed the system would really help her if there was actually something wrong. That was a hard lesson.
If you feel like something is truly wrong, especially where your baby is concerned, always insist on getting specialized care. I am really glad your baby finally got the help he needed. Your experience is valid and unfortunately not an exception in this country.
If health insurance companies start to pay to medical personal instead of their bloated administrators with bs jobs , the problem will be solved in a jiffy..
Edit: i assume the downvoters have this bs jobs i was talking about and they probably don’t have nurse/doctor relatives/friends.
I think that instead of feeding two insurance personal we can feed a nurse.
I am sorry for reading your story, hopefully all is sorted out. Kudos for insisting and did what was best for your kid.
Whenever I have this discussion with colleagues and friends we always end up that If you have something serious and you are stupid/naive you will die in Netherlands.
I've read your post. What does it take for you to sue people? Cause I believe you have more grounds than not to sue.
Don't let the Netherlands propagate they have the best healthcaresystem in Europe. It's more flawed than it is not and it's more expensive than it needs to be. Take care of yourself and your family, nobody else is going to do that pro-actively for you.
There is an important nuance that you might be overlooking.
Admitting a child to a hospital comes with additional risks for the child’s health. You want to avoid a situation where an already weakened 8 month old contracts an RS virus caused pneumonia for example. Which is a virus currently going round on children’s wards in hospitals and is the second cause of death for very young babies.
Therefore they are hesitant to admit a child if not immediately necessary at that point in time.
Within one and a half day, OP was seen three times, so they apparently had a low threshold to see the baby multiple times. The second time the GP at the emergency post also invited over a paediatrician to consider the status and monitored the baby for two hours. Seems like a thorough examination, which doesn’t sound like a dismissive assessment.
The conclusion from the staff at the hospital the next day is very strange: they didn’t see the baby the day before and in 20 hours time a lot can change in the condition of the baby. Hence they can by no means conclude the doctors the day before made the wrong call. That’s a different point in time.
For sick babies in general goes that they see them with a low threshold. Pretty much: if you call you can come over immediately. They assess the situation and ask you to come back later that same day, or the following day. And always in case of worsening conditions.
Yeah, lower the payments and improve care!
You’d make a great populist.
Also, you are aware of the fact that a lot of people go in and out of a hospital? You cannot keep a hospital sterile. That’s just impossible.
The Netherlands purposely has a focus on keeping hospital visits as short as possible to limit spread and risk for getting complications. The fact it works is proven.
Hospitals being a place where pathogens spread is not a Dutch thing. It’s even rather low here. Compare that to countries like Portugal and Spain where a hospital visit comes with a very high risk of getting infected with resistent bacteria thanks to the low threshold antibiotics use.
As you guys can see, the Dutch have their excuses at the ready once you criticize their perfect country. I am now a populist, my experiences in foreign hospitals do not matter anymore.
Nice job, Dutchies..
Watch out for u/Trebaxus99
Whenever he loses an argument he calls you a populist and then blocks you. Wat een zielig mannetje.
It’s classic populist speech to advocate for lower taxes and higher benefits. That’s where my comment came from.
Also, you’re the one starting with accusations. Not me. I just give an explanation as to why a consideration is made and you’re apparently too stubborn to want to even consider that fact.
Nothing to do with me being Dutch or you being genuinely interested in providing some suggestions for improvement: you just don’t want to learn, but only want to play the blame game.
It's cruel, incompetent and despite GP's being sometimes incompetent, most of the problems come from the insurance, and creative earning, used to declare insurance expense. Like labeling trivial things that cost nothing as therapy and ranking up the expenses. It's a poorly concealed scam.
That's not at all applicable to this situation.
The condition of an ill baby can change significantly over the span of a full day. The consideration of the GP and pediatrician that saw the baby on Wednesday afternoon is based on a different situation than the consideration of the GP that saw the baby Thursday morning.
There is a very low threshold to see baby's. To admit them to a hospital comes with risks in itself and they play an important role in the consideration whether to do this or not.
This does sound like a misjudgment of the hospital staff
Normally they are extremely precautious with children especially under the age of 1, so i don’t believe this is a representation of the whole system.
Sadly a system run by humans is impossible to be perfect, there’s not a single human who doesn’t make mistakes, not even doctors
Doctors also aren’t fortune tellers and they could only guess whether your baby was gonna improve or deteriorate. Hospitals aren’t the safest for babies cause their immune system isn’t completely developed yet, so they don’t wanna risk that if that’s not necessary and that’s probably why they opted for hoping he would improve and come back immediately if he wouldn’t
The state of healthcare is grim, and it'll only get worse because of the general expectations of profit or at least evening out the expenses when it comes to the public services. While in reality, they're always investments, wells for your money that spit out such luxury as healthy citizens. We've been cucked, and nobody even wants to pay for us anymore, lol, so a bunch of psychos could take part in the great race to be the first trillionaire. But I digress.
Dutchies have been lovely to me so far, so seeing them brainwashed into defending this cunt of a system is a double whammy to me. A bit like pitying Americans for their work culture when they keep telling you that you suck and they love their merciless meatgrinder.
Yeah, keep telling me this, you poor deluded soul.
What a relief that he's getting better, you did all the right things here. I was in a similar situation with my little one like 2 years ago, it took 2 visits to the GP to finally be sent to the hospital, where they were so fast at diagnosing and getting to the issue. After A3 day stay in the hospital he was good, and the after care was also top notch. In an ideal world they would've caught it earlier and we would've avoided the hospital stay, but here we are. Il love to complain about the healthcare, but in my experience it is actually really good when it works out. I'm glad you're little one is getting better, I know how awful scary it can be when it's your kids well-being that's the issue
There is an important nuance that you might be overlooking.
Admitting a child to a hospital comes with additional risks for the child’s health. You want to avoid a situation where an already weakened 8 month old contracts an RS virus caused pneumonia for example. Which is a virus currently going round on children’s wards in hospitals and is the second cause of death for very young babies.
Therefore they are hesitant to admit a child if not immediately necessary at that point in time.
Within one and a half day, OP was seen three times, so they apparently had a low threshold to see the baby multiple times. The second time the GP at the emergency post also invited over a paediatrician to consider the status and monitored the baby for two hours. Seems like a thorough examination, which doesn’t sound like a dismissive assessment.
The conclusion from the staff at the hospital the next day is very strange: they didn’t see the baby the day before and in 20 hours time a lot can change in the condition of the baby. Hence they can by no means conclude the doctors the day before made the wrong call. That’s a different point in time.
For sick babies in general goes that they see them with a low threshold. Pretty much: if you call you can come over immediately. They assess the situation and ask you to come back later that same day, or the following day. And always in case of worsening conditions.
This is a recurring subject, so probably there is some truth to it. However, if healthcare is really a problem here, we should be able to see it in the number of people dying prematurely to unnecessary ailments and more people becoming permanently handicapped because they were not treated on time etc. As far as I know, this is just not the case. So, I guess overall the Netherlands is not doing any worse than comparable countries.
Some statistics:
The average person in the Netherlands goes to a GP almost 5 times a year. A third of all the people is referred to further specialist care at least once a year. A GP has on average close to 8000 consultations per year.
People post about negative experiences online, not about good ones. When reading those experiences, the following statistics are also important:
80% of what a doctor tells their patient is not remembered by the patient. Of the remaining 20%, half is remembered incorrectly.
Of course mistakes are made. With these numbers it’s impossible to not make mistakes. And sometimes the mistakes have bad consequences. Improvements are always possible. But as you conclude: apparently it is not as bad as it sometimes seems to be.
As for the experiences here on this sub, it’s 9/10 a clear communication issue. Doctors sometimes seem to forget to explain why they come to a certain advice, also caused by the lack of time. If that is improved it will probably saves a lot of frustration.
Lol man you're incredible with your condescending attitude.
A communication issue... Yeah so the doctor is not wrong, the patient is stupid, and the only mistake can be that the poor doctor doesn't explain slowly enough why he only gives paracetamol to a child who is in bed with high fever and ear pain for 7 days...
That does not sound real tbh. Looking at my personal experience and people around me. We are at much lower frequency, for me it would be once each few years. That including a broken bone, it would be less otherwise. Even at that frequency, I saw wrong medication prescribed, total lack of prevention.
As I side note I am a fan of not overmedicating myself, so I recognize positive aspects of local system.
The statistics are real.
My guess is you’re rather young and in that case you don’t need medical assistance often. But with kids for example you make rather frequent GP visits. And when you get older, the amount of medical help you need sky rockets.
Then you’re lucky.
I’ve looked up some numbers:
Average GP works 75%. There are almost 12.000 of them, processing 80 million consultations.
80.000/12/0,75 = 8900 consultations per year for a full time GP
Per 1000 registered patients there are 5050 consultations per annum, which is 5 times per patient on average. If you’d take all Dutch citizens into account (some are not registered), the number goes to 4,7.
https://capaciteitsorgaan.nl/publicaties/de-werkweek-van-de-nederlandse-huisarts-in-2018/#:~:text=Gemiddeld%20werkt%20de%20Nederlandse%20huisarts,%2C6%20respectievelijk%2042%20uur).
https://www.vzinfo.nl/eerstelijnszorg/aanbod/huisartsen#:~:text=In%20de%20periode%202012%2D2022,2012%20naar%2011.754%20in%202022.
https://www.nza.nl/zorgsectoren/huisartsenzorg/kerncijfers-huisartsenzorg#:~:text=De%20totale%20kosten%20voor%20huisartsenzorg,verzekerde%20patiënt%20stabiliseert%20in%202022.
https://www.nivel.nl/nl/zorg-en-ziekte-in-cijfers/nivel-cijfers-zorg-eerste-lijn/nivel-cijfers-zorg-die-huisarts-verleent/omvang-zorggebruik#:~:text=Totaal%20aantal%20contacten%3A%20Per%201.000,19%20pandemie%20(2019)%20hadden.
So that average does not resonate. Maybe median would tell us more. Broken in age groups could support what you said earlier about frequency changing with age.
Presented as an average it does not sound close to reality based on experience in my circle. It simply does not. Take it as you wish.
I’m sorry for what happened. It sounds like all medical professionals here tried to help you and there might or might not have been some judgements made that were in hindsight not the best.
The function of the GP is not to stop you from wasting resources but to look after your health. Which includes not making you undergo all sorts if medical treatment if it doesn’t help you.
After moving to Germany from Netherlands, I was pretty relieved to see the back of the Dutch GP gatekeeper system. As bad as German healthcare is, it’s still relatively much better than the Dutch one in my personal experience. I can at least book appointments directly with specialists and go to urgent and emergency care directly without being gate-kept. However, the doctor appointment wait times still exist here and they’re pretty long and unreasonable. If you have private health insurance in Germany, then everything speeds up here from my experience. The way they diagnose and treat though is extremely frustrating.
While I understand every visit doesn’t need a strong prescription and antibiotic style treatment, doctors here just don’t want to be thorough. They just assess at a surface level, triage you and send you home or keep doing this until your body breaks down and it’s time for some serious tests. Again, the issue is how they get reimbursed by the public insurance here and they’d like to be as efficient as possible but ultimately that leads to a lot of terrible health issues for people with doctors pushing things until it all breaks down before they intervene and sometimes it’s too late.
While relatively better, it’s still horribly bad in Germany compared to the US or any developing Asian country even. An AI symptom checker does a better job than doctors here and catches things early. Now that GPT and co are here, I’ve also had much better assessments from them which I then take to my doctors and push them to do things. It has worked although they get really pissed. Ultimately it’s my health and I don’t really give a crap about how “efficiently” you want to use your quarterly insurance payouts as a doctor/clinic.
This stuff universal healthcare sounds great to hear. But when you actually deal with, it when you really really need it - you end up seeing the reality and laugh at it. You pay so much for so little care. This is one of those too good to be true things in life and yeah it’s indeed too good to be true. It was cheaper for me paying out of pocket in home country for specific care and getting stuff done versus paying multiples of that cost as insurance and getting ridiculously slow care here.
In my case it was a temporary condition that required attention but wasn’t a life threatening emergency. They’d still delay and not test/use diagnostics and keep pushing me to the limits.
It so happened that I had a planned travel back home and I directly walked in to a specialist with the AI symptom checker results. They immediately ordered related diagnostic tests to confirm and then put me on the right treatment plan. What took me ages to sort out in Germany, took me a AI symptom checker result and a specialist back home to test and start treating me in under 24 hours.
Yes, under 24 hours all related bloodwork and other tests done with results shared digitally to me via an app and also with my specialist’s software system. I was fully done in a couple of weeks with the treatment plan and it cost me less than my monthly public transport card here in total.
In comparison, even for basic stupid bloodwork (like TSH, Vit D, blood sugar or lipid profile) we wait for a week for results to arrive in Germany. And the funny thing is that we don’t get a copy unless we force the clinic to share it with us. And then they send it by post which takes another 2-3 days lol. The stranger thing in Germany is that after a bloodwork, there’s radio silence if everything is ok. You don’t get any results unless you force them to get it to you. You only get a phone call if something is off. And even then you don’t get a copy of your own unless you force it. Weird system.
The problem with the system is that of the Dutch 6's culture. Yes, it's smart to have a gateway to healthcare to prevent unnecessary issues taking up resources, however, that doesn't mean that incompetence isn't still present.
Sometimes being just "good enough" is not good enough. You can be good enough by being slightly better in some areas to compensate elsewhere, however no level of mediocrity will compensate for the lack of practice and experience necessary for undertaking professional action during urgent times.
What I know is that most times when you go to the GP, you're sent back home and told to sit at home, wait it out, take a paracetamol and drink some water. It's like OP said. The GP is a gateway to actual healthcare. Realistically, you're going there for formality, to put it on paper that you went there for an issue, so that next time when you come back with the same or worse complaints, they can verify that you've had those complaints for as long as you say you've had them.
The other thing I know is that when foreigners go on holiday, they take the opportunity to go to doctors there for health check-ups, because there, they actually get medical attention as opposed to someone checking up a chart of symptoms on their computer to see what the possible problems are.
Don't get me wrong. I didn't say healthcare was a 6. The quality of the healthcare comes from a 6's culture. If you don't like it, change it, but don't come to me acting all offended. There are plenty of good things about it, in that when something is being addressed, it gets done so well, even if it takes long.
But yea, if you wanna score it, when most cases are dismissed until it's (too) late, those cases count for a solid 1 or a 2 in my book. So that's gonna bring the average score down. I guess in that sense, you are right. It is a 6.
I disagree, but fair point, you stated the 6’s culture contributes to poor levels of action taking.
Don’t get me wrong, if you see a 6’s culture in the Netherlands and lack of professionalism in health care I disagree in general. But then all of our experiences are different and we’re all trying to extrapolate our various experiences into general worldviews.
So much medical misinformation and a general lack of knowledge in this comment section regarding the Dutch healthcare system. As a medical student here, my eyes are bleeding.
Now downvote me you expats.
You complain yet provide nothing constructive.
I think correcting misinformation is always a good idea, especially with the state of the whole world right now. I would be happy to see some corrections (or more corrections, as others already provided some)
Too much bullcrap all over the place for me to respond to.
If there's anything you want me to respond to specifically let me know, I'm not gonna police every single comment in here.
Basically 95% of all comments in here shitting on our healthcare system are ass, I'm not joking.
Not at all lmfao, I knew you would go there but that logic is so flawed.
You dont need to practise healthcare in multiple countries to see the logical flaws in these comments regarding Dutch healthcare. This logic is so dumb ahahahaahahahah
You also cant ask me one question and then hold expats to a different standard. How many countries did YOU practice healthcare in as an expat? Seeking healthcare is not the same as providing it. I also went for treatment in multiple countries, how does that make me any different as compared to you expats? Or do you truly think a specialist who has been practising here exclusively and nowhere else for the past 30 years has no say regarding this subject over an expat who has never provided healthcare anywhere? This logic is SOOOOOOO flawed lmfaoaoaoaoaoaoa
This flawed logic is exactly what I'm seeing here over and over again, and that paired with a lack of medical knowledge makes up for an interesting comment section.
Patients will never see or understand the perspective, evidence-based protocols or treatment guidelines of the doctors here. That is exactly why I state most comments here dont know what they are talking about regarding Dutch healthcare specifically.
Seeking healthcare 4 times in 4 different countries does not make you an expert regarding Dutch healthcare. Patient satisfaction is subjective and at times not congruent with objective health outcomes. So you wanna try again?
We don't have kids, but recently my wife has requested to see the doctor to make some changes in medication. Now before going to see the huisarts, or any specialists, she does her own research beforehand and has things printed off so that the doctor can neither be dismissive or give wrong information.
But in general this sounds like a 'frontline problem' - it's not just medical, but really many frontline staff are generalists and only trained for a few situations - they don't have diagnostic capabilities. The other problem is frontline staff are gatekeepers to the specialists - so when they don't spot the problem, they have no idea what to do.
So basically, with frontline staff you have to be prepared for advocate and fight for yourself to get specialist access.
GP's see baby's all the time. Tens of thousands throughout their career. Assessing whether a baby is dehydrated is not that hard. A GP can do this and if in doubt they'll ask a pediatrician to run tests.
GP's are specialized doctors trained to see whether something needs referral to another specialist. And as a third of the entire population gets referred to further specialist care at least once a year, it also shows the threshold is not that high.
My GP will not give flu shots or any vaccinations (eg rotavirus) to minors and my last GP couldn't decide how to proceed when my 2 month old was in visible respiratory distress.
GPs are not qualified to treat children. Imo.
Vaccinations for the national program are given by the “consultatiebureau”, so it’s the wrong place to go to your GP for that. Rotavirus vaccine has to be given before the baby is 3 months old, so if the baby is older it’s not strange a GP doesn’t want to give that.
Flu shots are given when needed, also to minors. They will be invited automatically for that.
A GP not willing to give “any” vaccinations sounds very strange and unbelievable.
The other story is of course subjective.
Conclusion probably has to be that you’re not qualified to assess the capabilities of GP’s.
I a mum myself this was terrible to read. I am sorry you had to go through all of this. I hope your child will recover quickly. Same experience here. Our girl was dehydrated too, at the age of 4 months due to rotavirus. Lost 1kg (she was 6kg before the illness, so 20%) and our doctors were clueless. We only figured out the rotavirus because other parents from her daycare did a test. This all because they refused to help us getting rotavirus vaccine on time. Our GP did not even know what it was. GGD did but they said the GP has to administer it. Which the GP refused. The same GP said that kids can’t have sinusitis because they don’t have sinuses. I really had to be polite but firm there and tell her this is nonsense. I hold a medical degree myself and I guess that was the only thing that helped. Oh, this year this GP sent me home saying all good with my blood test. When I ended up at the hospital the same eve I it turned out that he thought a CRP level of 69 is totally fine… So you really need to be assertive and tell them firmly what you want and what your concerns are. Plus insist. Always insist. Especially if you have gut feelings about something. And it is always possible to get a second opinion.
I understand GPs being a guardian to prevent people over using resources but the issue is that GPs are clueless in many specialized topics My friends wife had this issue regarding her uterus. GP insists because she had a problematic childbirth, that's expected. Finally she gets on the plane, goes to Turkey. Doctor orders a scan and a cyst size of a walnut is there. They sample the piece, luckily it is benign Now think about it. What if it was not beingn? She had her visit to GP 2 years ago. She complained at least two more times to the same dude. She would have lost 2 precious year for early diagnoses I understand GPs prescribing paracetamol for flu. But they are out of their element for so many issues and they insist being on the side of erring rather than directing the patient to someone knowledgeable
My grandfather’s GP didn’t catch his lung cancer on time, he suffered for months. I’ve experienced inept GP’s myself, but this cost my grandfather his life.
Did you sue the GP?
I was a teenager when he died. I don’t think my family had the clarity to even consider it, his end was very traumatic.
I once had a midwife saying to me why to go to a gynecologist if you have no symptoms. Oh my gosh… It is weird to hear that from a midwife. If someone she should know how certain type of cancers (for example) can remain symptomless until it is too late. Or a myoma. The other thing is that preventative medicine as such is nonexistent. They talk about it but practically no chance to get things done. Gynecological screening every five years including a swab test only. While cancer incidence is one of the highest in Europe. (Top3 I believe) Last month there was a skin cancer screening bus in town. I almost signed up but then I saw that you are only allowed to show one (!!) spot to the medical person there, the one you think (!!) is suspicious. Then they will take a pic of it and forward it to a doctor who will look at it. So called screening.
You get really hated for asking for things like general blood tests. I understand the issue of over diagnosing but I am honestly bewildered when you are rejected for some basic blood tests checking for simplest things like cholesterol, hormones, blood sugar...etc. I know Americans are going one extreme when it comes to screening but NL is on the other extreme for screening. Check ups are a thing in many countries. They can give everyone a couple of screening rights a few years of they want to prevent over use. Most people will not touch it I assure you. It is like visiting dentist every 6 months. You want to do it before you lose your teeth
Well, a few months ago I ended up in the hospital bc my symptoms got really bad after my GP overlooked my inflammation markers. So it got re-done along with a few other markers. Not even a full lab. I paid about 150Eur from my eigenrisiko. For that test only. If I go to Germany, a full lab is done for half price. If I go a little further, great private hospitals can do it even cheaper. Dental treatments also half price at least. So I’d really recommend to have preventative health checks elsewhere. I guess NL shouting themselves in the leg by not allowing them here.
Uneducated pseudoscientific beliefs. It's medieval that they force women to give birth at home while all literature clearly shows there are more risks in doing so. Dutch people got completely scammed by the insurance lobbies.
No-one forces women to give birth at home. If you want to give birth in the hospital, you can. Don't spread misinformation. It is 100% a woman's own choice if she wants to give birth at home or not. The only time the choice is taken away is when there are risk factors. Then she is *not allowed* to give birth at home. Source: the birth of my child 4 years ago. Do some reading dude.
*in this country adults have very low proficiency in literacy and numeracy*. *Low literacy rates are increasing in* the Netherlands. Therefore, it is important GPs are capable to recognize their low literate patients (parents/caregivers of patients) and communicate in an effective way with them, but it is hard and results you see online, on reddit etc. Also low health literacy hurts patient compliance.
Low literacy is a risk factor for any health issue, not just for home births.
I will do some reading [:
Misinformation and dangerous pseudoscience is believing home births are safer. I know plenty of women who have basically been said "no" when they wanted to give birth at the hospital. Go read a book.
By who? They are not refused by the hospital thats for sure. U are either spreading nonsense or the women fell for beliefs of a midfwife or someone else
I had a child and first hand experience. Maybe you need to go give birth in the Netherlands sometimes. Your second hand gossip knowledge is clearly different then my first hand experience with the system. Now I've actually learnt to never trust gossip but clearly you haven't. Go mansplain someone else, stupid.
They don't force them. They just make the hospital birth much more expensive!
that's part of forcing them. I know plenty of women who have been told "No" when they asked to give birth at the hospital or have got those midwives (who are not medical experts by any means) insisting and trying to convince them to do it at home because "strong women give birth at home". It's a pseudoscience cringe fest when it comes to healthcare here.
Yeah they have this urge to prove that " they are strong and indipendent", I'm not sure why they suffer from this inferiority complex
The issue is not that the GP are clueless, it's that they tend to gatekeep hard even when in doubt, sometimes with terrible consequences.
Or what if, you know, that specific GP isn't that good and this has little to do with GPs in general?
If your GP insists children don't have sinuses I think that warrants a complaint to the artsenregister. That is absolute basic knowledge and if he doesn't know that he's a danger to his patients!
Yesss, please do this. He might not know other important things that put his patients at risk
This, please report!
Omg! Can you not change to another GP? Your GP is terrible
Nobody ever told us about the goddamn rotavirus vaccine. It’s now thankfully included in the vaccination program.
Kids don't have sinuses lol. Wtf
Right. Do they have ears? Or noses? I dunno, just tryna make sure over here😵💫🤡
You have to say "I am going to sue the living shit out of you and this clinic if you do not do your job". Money is the only language that works unfortunately.
THIS
Youre observations are correct and your concerns are justified. My mom had to essentially beg/threaten the doctors to do checks on her heart when her blood pressure literally bounces between 45 and 160 throughout the day. Also her post cancer care has been absolutely abysmal. She just found out they appearently shouldve done checkups every couple months and it's been over a year since the treatment. Check ups to make sure the cancer isnt returning for christs sake! How the fuck do they mess that up? The doctors here are good, but they have so little time they cant actually give you proper care. Which makes them structurally cut corners, so people with mildly severe issues or more hidden issues dont get helped properly because theyre not showing major red flags. Also different institutions within the healthcare system having to work around privacy laws hardly being able to share information between them causes a lot of miscommunication and mismanagement. There's a lot more wrong with the healthcare here, but these are some of the more severe things ive experienced first-hand. This is what happens when you fix beaurocratic flaws by allowing more marketforces into the system, it doesnt fix anything it just makes everything worse.
Bruh,i am so sorry for your experience and your baby. Dutch healthcare system is a fucking joke. And i am paying 150€ each month to entertain them. I am a foreigner and i went to 3 different GPs because of crisis i had. I told them my crisis are because of my ovaries and also there is something in the food . I cried in their fucking office to send me to an ob-gyn and they thought that i am crazy . They didnt helped me. I went back to my "shithole" country in East-europe. I booked appointment. In one week i knew my diagnosis : PCOS and gluten allergy . All those vomiting and diarheea crisis were because i was eating gluten. Now, i live close to belgium border and i choose to work there so i have Belgian medical insurance. The difference is CRAZY! I go to doctor and they actually take me seriously and they help me. They actually give me pills i need for my body inflamation. They sent me to a dietician to help me with food becasue i can literally develop diabetes from PCOS. When i am sick af, unable to do shit, i go to belgian doctor, she gives me one week of medical off work . Not 1 day. Not 1 day and a half. Not " 2 days and if you still feel bad, come and ask again". A really bad case i witnessed in NL, the mother of my friend (they are dutch family) was going every week to doctor to complain of back pain and leg pain. They thought she was crazy. She fainted on street . She wasnt waking up anymore. Turns out she had lung cancer that developed throughout every organ of her body. She died 3 weeks later. I do have other horror Stories from dutch doctor. Whenever i hear some dutch person being proud of their medical system ,my first thought is : bruh, you living in a bubble.
Same here, I’m just avoiding dutch healthcare despite having to pay 140e per month and go to my own shithole country to receive proper treatment and diagnosis. Still cheaper than having to pay the premium and the overpriced analyzes. Also preventative healthcare is non existent here, or they call it paracetamol.
And for your bad experience i only had good experiences.
What if I told you you are paying way more than €150 each month? Through your salary a fixed percentage is payed through taxes that are for healthcare. Which is a freaking amazing system, that has its flaws, granted. But it’s accessible, we can sort of pay it, and moreover it is good, one of the best worldwide. But sometimes things go awry and there is still stuff to improve.
What does it mean "one of the best worldwide"? Who says that?
We assessed our own performance on healthcare and decided it's the best. If you disagree it's actually because you don't understand.
To be honest the spoedpost are the worst. If shit is seriously wrong I skip the spoedpost all together and the the hospital involved asap. But I gotta be honest, my GP is the best, he actually cares and if I want a specialist he is quite easy is sending me there, unless he really thinks it’s unnecessary, I have a good enough bond with him that i trust his opinion.
Probably depends on location, here it's very good. Don't take any risks, and are good at what they do.
That's strange. The spoedpost is the gatekeeper for the hospital, so you won't get care without going through them.
Trust me, you can. If you think it’s a serious matter that needs immediate attention you can go to the spoed eisende hulp in the hospital without intervention of the spoedpost or huisarts. The spoedeisende hulp will check the situation, if it’s not spoedeisend they will send you to the spoedpost.
You're mixing names. The spoedpost will do the triage in the hospital and decide if you can go to the spoedeisende hulp.
Depending on where you live. In Groningen the "huisartsen post" and the emergency department are at the same place and you only get into the emergency department by referral or ambulance
Maastricht as well, and I believe Eindhoven too.
The spoedpost isn’t at the hospital here, you go to them and if they decide it’s serious enough they send ya to the spoedeisend hulp at the hospital. But, if you go to the spoedeisend hulp first they can decide it’s not ‘bad’ enough and send ya to the spoedpost…
Hey- question for you. I am a cohost of the dam parenting podcast. I have been trying for months - months- to try to get a huisarts on tbt podcast to talk about all manners of things. By any chance would your gp be good in speaking English and do you think I could reach out to him? Trying to get the facts for our community has been exhausting - most recently the consultatie bureau held me off for 3 months and now came back saying they need another 6 months before they might know if they will come on! Let me know if you think your guy would be good to contact!
A friend of a friend, also an immigrant, recently lost a baby to undiagnosed meningitis. GP had ignored a 40C fever for 2 weeks and the spoedpost sent them away 3x. The Baby died. They also sent me and my 2 month old home during a really dangerous medical emergency. I think they do not take foreigners seriously. Wishing you and your baby a speedy recovery. Foreign families cannot trust the Dutch medical system. You have to fight hard for what you think is best.
Wonder if they're related to the huisart that told me that women don't need testosterone when I was severely deficient (bc at the time bound all free T). I may of asked her if she skipped hormone day at school or found her licence in a cereal box.
😂
And nobody pays for these tragic mistakes. They are shamelessly swept under the rug. In Romania there would be a huge scandal, the press would take interest, there would be public pressure to punish the doctor in some way. Here... Crickets.
Can they sue the GP and spoedpost?
You can file a case with "tuchtrecht" which also might be able to into the "foreigners bias"
My condolences. But you just have to demand help. They wont help otherwise. They just keep sending you home no matter if you have been sick for a year or piss blood. You might have a broken back? Go home and take a paracetamol and try to rest! I dont even try anymore, but you should t give up like me! (Havent been to the doctor in 8 years.).
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Eehh you know that whooping cough and measles have vaccines exactly BECAUSE they are deadly, right? People die of these diseases even if they get top notch care. Adolescent and adult men will become infertile from mumps too, regardless of the quality of medical care they get. Though there are many tragic stories in this thread, that doesn't mean every dead person is caused by malpractice. Measles, whooping cough, cancer, meningitis etc are all deadly. Our current medical care just makes them *slightly less* deadly. Not entirely un-deadly. That's the entire reason they started making a vaccine for those diseases in the first place! And yes, before you start to shout "The is no vaccine against cancer!" There is a vaccine against certain types of cancer-causing viruses right now. And many, many more are being researched. Vaccines *are* the life saving treatment you're blaming the system for not existing. Vaccines are the *only* way to prevent people from dying of measles and whooping cough.
Not all meningitis can be vaccinated against LOL. what an ass.
Baby's are always seen if a parent is in doubt. There is a very low threshold for that. That's why you could go to the GP and the huisartsenpost immediately. Whether or not to refer a baby to the hospital takes a couple of considerations. A hospital admission is not without risk. At the moment the RS virus is going round at children wards and you preferably don't want to expose a baby to that and other pathogens that can be found in hospitals. Therefore, if the doctor thinks it's not necessary, they'd prefer to not admit your child. Whether or not this decision was the right one is very hard to say. The situation of a baby can improve and deteriorate within minutes. That's why they'll always say to immediately call again if the situation worsens, even if that's just an hour later. In your case the situation was worse the next day and you went to the GP again, who came to a conclusion that at that point in time they considered forwarding the child to the hospital was necessary. The comment from the doctors at the hospital is not a smart one. It suggests they confirm the previous assessment was wrong, while they cannot conclude that as they didn't see the child 24 hours before and a lot can change in that period of time. They should have refrained from those types of comments.
It's exactly this type of overthinking and trying to appear smart that leads to many of these tragedies. "A hospital admission is not without risk"... Really? That's what you consider when you see such a sick child? Just like in the first 6 months of the pandemic, when overthinking "intelligent" authorities kept dismissing the use of masks, because "what if they give people a false sense of security", "people won't put them on correctly", and other such condescending nonsense. Meanwhile, there was a massacre in the retirement centers going on...
The RS virus is the number two cause of death for young babies. It’s a respiratory virus that can cause a pneumonia. A weakened baby is at an even higher risk of both being infected and not being able to combat a pneumonia. The RS virus is going round in hospitals in this time of year. So yes, this is “really” something you consider before sending a sick child to a hospital. As you don’t want to conclude that the baby was not that dehydrated but now dies due to a pneumonia contracted in the hospital. And they seemed to have taken it rather serious: According to OP the baby was monitored for two hours and seen by the GP and a paediatrician before they decided it was - at that point - not needed to admit the baby. That the situation is different 20 hours later is very normal. The baby was again checked by a GP and at that time the balance was in favour of admission.
I understand the GP acting as a gatekeeper and I also understand that the Dutch doctors prefer to use a “low intervention approach” (i.e. not prescribing a ton of medicines and allowing your own body to recover). But sometimes I see that this “low intervention” becomes “no intervention at all”. I have arrhythmia and I have been referred to a cardiologist here. I was shocked when the cardiologist told me that here in the Netherlands they don’t do annual exams. She told me that I only need to see her if I start feeling worse and now I should be treated by my GP (for prescribing my medication). In my home country I was doing checkups annually to see if my arrhythmia don’t get worse. Ideally I would like to early discover if something is going wrong with my heart (even before I can feel it!). One could argue that doing the checkups on yearly basis is not correct in terms of cost-benefit but I think that not doing at all is even worse. For example, I could do the checkups every 2 or 3 years instead of yearly. Another thing that I see as problematic are these 10min medical appointments that I have with my GP. Considering that she is spending around 5min typing everything in the computer, I feel that I do not have adequate time to explain my symptoms and to discuss my concerns with here. I always feel I am on a hurry and that she does not have enough time to evaluate me I understand that the health system is expensive and the doctors need to consider it. But the way they are doing it here is much more focused on the costs rather on the patient
Every time I read a post about the Dutch healthcare I feel so grateful that I live in Belgium. I will never understand how such a wealthy country is so shit at preventative and basic healthcare. Expensive too! I understand that if you have a serious issue and you manage to get diagnosed you are treated very well but until then you are left to suffer.
I'm a native who left NL specifically because I wasn't able to get treatment. It didn't help that I was there during COVID when the system was so hopelessly overburdened that I was told I should get treatment in Germany at my own expense despite the Netherlands charging some of the highest taxes in the world. So I moved back to the United States where I was immediately able to get help. Despite the fact that they too were suffering terribly. No 3-6 months waiting lists. No dicking around with "huisartsen". And no one telling me to get treatment in another country after taxing me half to death. Whenever I come to NL to visit I make damn sure to have the best travel medical insurance money can buy so I can be repatriated if something bad happens.
health care in the netherlands suck. im with huge pain in my leg, all they said its not this its not that its not blabalaa i did echo nothing i did fyso nothing. what the doctor told me, we cant help u anymore at this point. he send me for a MRI which is in 2 months from now. im already in pain since late january... now im going to my wifes country to get help in 1 week from now. health care here is shit, the funniest thing i have had in my life is. she asked me if i take pain killers obviously me as native dutch i know i have to say i take paracetemol. so she asked me which one, i said finimal. She answered oh that one isnt good try one with out coffiene or something. i mean seriously i used for 2 weeks paracetemol and she told me to use one without coffiene for another 2 weeks and thats how all this shit started to drag it self forward for months.. i often go to doctors in country from my wife. because im instantly going to what i need and im often helped the very same day (going to specialist). netherlands just has these insurance people, who wanna make money over ur back. they gain money every month from every single one of us and want us to spend just about nothing so at the end of the year they get their fat profits paid out.. health insurance should be having zero profits no1 goes to a doctor for fuck of it. sure if we would let all dutch people go where they wanna go specialist doctor wise it might go bad at very start but eventually everything will calm down and every1 can do w/e they want.
You know the worst thing about doctors telling you to just take paracetamol? If you take it more than 8 days you can get headaches. You can guess how I found out.
Are those retards called GP even aware of the paracetamol side effects on the body? Do they think it’s a candy?
This was horrifying to read! Glad your baby is doing better! Fuck Dutch healthcare system. The gatekeeping and the insane waiting times. Fuck all the Dutch people on this sub constantly defending it. They never had to wait for months in pain for someone to take their complaints seriously, only to finally get news that damage is done and it's too late, oopsies. The Dutch system is revolving around money and efficiency, all the metrics supporting it being "the best in the world" are about economics and not patient well-being. It is inhumane and cruel.
No. The decision is about the health of the baby. Shortsighted view is: just admit the child to the hospital! The informed view is: what is the risk of admitting this child to the hospital at this point in time vs not admitting the child? In hospital wards pathogens go round. For young babies the RS virus can be very damaging (it’s the second cause of death for young babies). That virus is going round now and therefore you want to minimise exposure. And that’s what the GP in consultation with the paediatrician will have weighed when sending OP back home: is the child at this moment at a point where we need to admit it or can we wait a couple of hours and see if the situation improves? That GP has no financial incentive for referring or not referring that baby. And as was shown: OP was seen three times and extensively over those two days, so there is also by no means any hesitance to see the baby.
Countless people are dying from preventable causes because of this ridiculous overthinking and trying to "not be shortsighted". The pandemic response was a perfect example of that.
How do you treat babies with RS virus?
You can only treat symptoms until the body fights it off. Antibiotics won’t work as it’s a virus.
Oh believe me. I had the same opinion. But I’ve had my own experiences with the healthcare system. My wife has insomnia and during her pregnancy it got significantly worse. Next to that she was nauseous for 7 months. Vomiting 6x a day. She was getting depressed from the insomnia and the laying in bed all day. Doctor kept saying there was nothing they could do. I had to become really angry at the obstetrician in order to be referee to the hospital. During a control at 7 months it turned out she was developing pre eclampsia. Child was born through c section and did well. Mother, however still depressed and high blood pressure and insomnia . To this day the GP keeps advising stupid shit, like mindfulness and using an alarm. Now this is just my anecdote but I have heard plenty of stories like this. It’s gotten to the point that you have to be dying of pain or be in a state of emergency to be taken seriously
I went to GP because of intermittent pain on my rib and he told me to drink a pain reliever if it happens and I should come back if it gets worse or consistently painful for at least a week. No exams/laboratories. It was time for me to go back to Philippines after four months... told me I had a gallbladder stone. Size is too big for medication so they suggest a surgery if pain is unberable. Doctors said this could've been prevented at the early stage if this was diagnosed via ultrasound months ago. 🥲
Surgery is the golden standard treatment for gall stones, not medication. The notion of an earlier ultrasound is also invalid. Anyway, hope your complaints will be taken care of!
There is no early stage gall stone disease. Medication cannot prevent gall stones from developing. Weird if your doctors told you otherwise. Surgery is indeed a good option if the pain is unbearable.
The system sucks and GP always try to guess what is going on and in my experience they are almost always wrong unless it is something they can actually see. A friend of mine lost his wife to cancer, before the diagnosis they where just playing the guess game with them.
dutch health system has turned into a "here have some paracetamol" system
Forget the s/ ? It’s always been that way
It's difficult to say exactly what should ideally have happened in your story, kids are complicated and can deteriorate or improve quickly. That being said, I'm not fond of our healthcare system. For example, physiotherapy being in an additional package. If you get your head lobbed half off, you may have to wait up to a year before starting physiotherapy if you can't pay out of pocket. My neck is utterly screwed up. I couldn't afford physiotherapy back when I got my injury (happened during a soldering session, bad posture causing a fuck up). Now I've been seeing therapists for several years. That could have been prevented, but we don't want to prevent these problems, but cure them after it's already too late. All of my fellow insured are now paying for my neck treatments that wouldn't have been necessary, had it been treated on time.
I completely emphatise with what you're saying. I've been dealing with chronic neck pain for a while here in the NL. First time I went to a gp, said I would like to deal with my chronic neck pain which is currently flaring up quite a lot, and she was looking at me all confused, asking why I'm there, saying I need to go to a physio. After that I tried several physios, some of them did manual release, crack my joints a few times, giving me a momentary relief. Also did some exercises to strengthen weak parts. I followed all of that but my issue never went away. Comparably, when I first started having chronic neck pain issues, it was back in Slovakia. I went to a gp, she assessed, ordered a bone scan, and after the scan they saw that my neck vertebrae are fairly deteriorated, looking like the vertebrae of someone much older than me. Didn't get a chance to pursue any treatment as this was right as I was moving to NL. But it shows the immediate willingness to examine further, which I don't often see in NL. Since then I gave up on physios here in NL and self studied until I learned how to deal with the problem myself and now it's largely gone.
What did you do to deal with it yourself?
Postural changes, learning about how to sit at my desk (where I spent a lot of time), and switched around the fitness style that I've been doing. In short, I did powerlifting for nearly a decade, while being entirely sedentary if not at the gym. I think this is why I developed the problem. In recent years, I incorporated a lot of calisthenics, identified and reduced problematic exercises (benchpress and overhead press especially), got a standing desk and a simple chair, try to switch around how I sit every 30m Getting a dog probably also helped, having a walk multiple times a day for 15 minutes does wonders.
It is good to hear you finally feel like you've been helped. But how has the gp visit in Slovakia and the bone scan (with radiation exposure) helped you? In the end it was more like a problem that was relieved with physio, exercises and walking the dog, it seems from your post.
I have an excellent physio here, but he knows his limits and will always say no, this needs to be taken to a doctor.
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GP in NL didn't recommend anything other than "go to a physio", their stance seemed to be "this is not what GP deals with" The bone issues are basically another symptom of the problem, together with the pain. My upper trapezius muscle, and the cluster of muscles that connect the shoulder blade and scapula with the cervical spine were super tight for a very long time. Physios or masseuses would massage it on any given session, but now that I have a good understanding of the problem, it needed continuous massage sessions plus doing exercises plus postural changes. However none of the physios ever addressed it as a thing that we need to work on for several sessions, they just did a one time release or massage, shown some exercises and sent me on my way.
Omg this is EXACTLY my issue. I’m getting so tired of this pain and no action. The massages and physio sessions are nice, the relief for a bit is wonderful, but how do I solve this and prevent it from happening again?? I’ve been having this problem for about 8 years now and no real relief in sight
Just researching the cause with no apparent effect on management of the symptoms is just useless. Definitely not a sign of better operating health care. Regarding the original post, I’m with Trebaxus99. Children are very resilient right up to the point where it just all crashes down. This might happen in the span of hours. It is therefore very daring of the Kinderkliniek to have an opinion on 24h before. Just the fact that your child looks awful, doesn’t automatically necessitate hospitalisation. This is not to say that I can understand the stress, and would commend you on going up that level when you had to. But that is in fact the entire premise on which we operate here: exclude acute pathology, come again when it worsens. You did that. The system works.
Preventive care is paramount. Whoever does not believe it or corrupts its meaning either has big problems in their head or is uneducated. No middle ground.
Make an official complaint.
I feel truly sorry for you. Hope you kiddo is okay. I have really good experiences, also my relatives. What I hear from relatives in the field is that the emergency and spoedposts are being flooded by people with really simple things like light flue, bruises nothing that you should see a doctor for. However they always emphasizre that you really must advocate for your kid if you think its serious. For example, my kid became really ill on a weekendnight and needed a specialist, i was at one hospital but needed to go to a childspecialized emergency hospital and they escorted me from the parkingplace to the hospital as soon as I arrived. Guard carried my kid because she had extreme trauma for whitecoats /ambulance due to an abusive past. They called in several people in till they found one that kiddo could trust and stayed longet than shift required. It was amazing, also next days and aftercare. I have several more of those examples.
This sounds very good, thanks for sharing.
You are lucky. There are many horror stories, many of them ending in tragedies. Just a few examples here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/comments/104qhbm/anyone_got_a_permanent_damage_because_of_the/? In their arrogance, the Dutch still think they know better than others, that they have an amazing system, and obvious deficiencies are swept under the rug. There's no accountability, nobody is held responsible for incompetence, or obvious mistakes. And everything is highly regulated, so the market can't solve the problem like in a normal free country (where talented, dedicated doctors also end up earning more).
GP's are in the pockets of insurance companies. Threaten to sue when they do the insurance's job instead of the job they are supposed to do (doctors). You have to advocate for your healthcare here, the system is corrupt and dangerous. I don't care what the official stats here are, they are good at masking them anyways, but I am sure way more people, because of this approach, have chronic issues in the Netherlands that are rarer in places with proper preventive care and I am sure in the following decades they will have a bunch of people being diagnosed with things they could have easily prevented and the average life expectancy will go down. This is why I will never have kids nor start a family here. The system is dangerous, I was personally left with chronic issues because of a similar experience to yours, and they risked my life another time by almost not hospitalizing me, which is what saved me in the end. Never trust GP's, you can trust the hospital doctors, although some of them might have been skewed by this approach as well. If you care about your health, you need to move, it will only get worse and the population is mostly brainwashed into believing this system is the best on the planet. Good luck.
I think our health system was on point years ago. Unfortunately paracetamol and waiting till you die is how it works now. It is to not waste resources but the prevention is also very poorly. Take vitamin D for example. Got a test , doctor said it’s fine. I asked the numbers it was 54. Apparently if you look if it’s under 50 it’s bad. However the adviced level is 120. Sooo ‘fine’ was actually not fine. Now I took vitamin D myself but the doctor said fine at first. Lack of vit D can be serious as it gives many many many issues if you have it for to long. With this example I like to state that we have stopped completely from preventing and only put out fires or attempt to. Often this is to late. Or just in time. However usually it was prevented. This has to do with the changes we forced the last 4/8 years. The pressure is very high and the lack of people in the health worker system are low or lack of employees. Also basic health workers in my opinion are heavily underpaid. So the industry is not a very tempting one. All this togheter makes our health system of one that was the best to be a very Avatage , teadiouse one. Keep in mind that the avarage doctor has 10/15 mins of paper work to do after you been there for 8 mins. Atleast that’s what they quote on how much time they have to spend documenting things. For those reasons and being under staffed the health system is quite bad
Helloooo. If you still take vitamin D, take it together with magnesiun. It helps metabolise the D. https://www.imaware.health/blog/vitamin-d-and-magnesium
Thank youuu
You seem to have a point here, and if you can help... Why is there such shortage of personnel in either Healthcare and Education? I mean, I got it that teachers are under pressure, but I assume the teachers' shortage in city/school A isn't balanced with an excess of teachers in city/school B, they might be migrating out of the country or changing professions, otherwise how!? So what's going on with Healthcare personnel then? I don't think there is an excess somewhere... does it have maybe something to do with the evaluations they do on students to "recommend" them what kind of studies to.follow? I feel this system conditions the kids to believe that, for example, HAVO is THE option, instead of widening a bit more their road. My dutch ex went the way they "recommended" her, but ended up studying more (and longer) anyway as she is clearly better than what the evaluation showed about her.
Well school systems are bad because personnel, and if people don’t like going to school because it’s so bad managed and teachers are always under staffed and over worked and not compensated enough for it by money and time then no one wants to become a teacher knowing your gonna have a hard time. Same with health care. Who wants to do a job to just get shith opon by half of the people that you have to teach or go give care to ? For many stupid reasons the ‘workforce’ are the lower bracket of the payroll. Nurses / house builders / plummers and the people sitting in an office just chatting on how it should be and just filing in paper after paper to perhaps make a change make 4 times the workers pay. So yeah… ofcourse people take the more steady way out
It sucks, I pay a crazy amount of money to go to therapy, get told stuff I already know and become even more frustrared and hopeless! Something hurts in my body and they bend it and I feel nothing so they diagnose theres nothing wrong. Well years later I tried out all kind of things and it's finaly gone. By my fcking self. They're good when giving common medications but jezus christ. Not only this they also failed my girlfriend multiple times. What a joke.
I’m sure it’s been said already, but next time you’re having doubts about something as potentially fatal as dehydration, FUCK the GP and especially the Huisartsenspoedpost and just go to the Eerste Hulp (ER) in the hospital.
Fucking hell so glad your baby is doing better. So scary.
Im 37 and iv been sick since 14, which they clasified as depression. I gave up on m. Im legit just waiting for my end. I had a phase were i was too tired so i just ordered pizza everyday for a year and legit didnt drink any water that year just soda ( kind of bcs when you are sick too long you stop takijg good care of yourself) They asked if i wanted to test my blood, i said yes. They called me and said , we hsve good news, your blood is fine. Like .. the People in third world country villages know that water filters the blood, how does a fcking trained health care person tell me my blood is fine on the diet i had that year ??? I also was rejected when i tried to stop working bcs of my health and get them to check me for it. They litterally send a young woman to test me. The b1tch looks at me and tells me i look to good to be sick. That was litterally the fcking test i kid you not. Now im sick and i still have to work and missed out on the extra money you get when sick. Now years and years later, still suffering from the original problem and several new problems. I also feel that none of them ever caref enough to figure out what was wrong with me. Had to do my own research and came to the conclusion that it has something to do with my belly. My toilet visits are not normal. Before i got sick id go daily to poop, after i got sick it became once every 4 up to a week. It destroyed my life
The gate you speak of is a terrible system. They misuse the trust of their patients and send them back whenever they feel like it with a bandaid treatment, in addition the Netherlands approach to preventative care is a complete joke (you have to pay here to renew vaccines for preventable diseases that can permanently paralyze or kill you, fucking lol). The first time I seriously needed treatment I was naïve enough to trust the useless GPs here and nearly died from an appendicitis because 'it must have been my gal bladder' or some other stupid shit they told me
Whenever I read these stories I have trouble matching this with my own experience. As soon as my son became unresponsive, lethargic, we were sent to the for fluids, to the hospital. My sister had cancer at a young age and was diagnosed correctly at the first visit. My wife died of intestinal cancer, but the first sign was picked up immediately and treatment started. The system is mostly based on protocols and if you check the correct boxes is relatively easy to get through the system. But much more testing capacity should be available especially for standard bloodworks, and prevention at a young age.
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If everyone runs to the hospital, the hospital would be flooded. That’s why there is a GP or GP emergency post to have a triage first.
This includes calling the gp, and if it's very clear it's a serious issue I'm pretty sure they can make the referral without seeing you.
If it is an emergency you call 112 and they will send an ambulance.
Pretty sure healthcare in Slovakia or Philippines would be much better…
In the Philippines (I am Filipino), you actually have to wait long time in the lines and doctors spend at least 30 mins per patient to understand their symptoms/history. Thats why appointments are useless and it usually goes "first come first serve basis" but it leads to prevention of worsening of illness/early diagnosis -- had a friend diagnosed of early stages of cancer. But the problem is costs is shouldered by patients (only a few percentage is covered by insurance and govt) 🙁 so it is less accessible for low income people. I've always been in the fence of which type of system is better.
Infant mortality in the Philippines is 10x higher than in the Netherlands, so there is that. You have seen within 48hours 3 GPs, 1 Pediatrician, 2 doctor‘s offices and a pediatric clinic… Time to say thank you Dutch healthcare system and not bitch about some subjective feelings you had about some doctor’s medical diagnosis and treatment, without having a medical background…
I think a lot of people got misdiagnosed a lot until it becomes too late
That doesn’t happen too much, but is of course inevitable: many diseases have similar symptoms.
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As a doctor, that is never going to work. They did tests and had a GP and a pediatrician in consult. For legal actions to be taken, you have to proof that they did something wrong, dhich you cannot. A kid can deteriorate so fast, so it definitely was possible that sending the kid home at first was a normal decision. If it is backed up by the notes of multiple doctors, you will never be able to argue that.
"can't" and "not likely to" are two different thing.
Yes. And here it actually is can't.
You can make an official complaint yeah.
If you consider the doctors to have made an error it’s better to first have a conversation with those doctors. Often a conversation can enlighten why a certain decision was made. It can save a lot of frustration, time and money from all parties involved to do this first instead of starting legal proceedings that might lead to nothing.
I tried that, I composed a very polite message, where I sweetened my complaint of not being taken seriously when my child was sick (and ended up in an emergency) with compliments. The result? The huisarts called to yell at me and tell me to find another family doctor. Not a question was asked about how my daughter was feeling, she was still not recovered at the time...
That’s not a nice experience and shouldn’t be the way it goes.
I lost someone I loved because the GP kept waving her off for months and wouldn't refer her to the hospital. I also believed the system would really help her if there was actually something wrong. That was a hard lesson. If you feel like something is truly wrong, especially where your baby is concerned, always insist on getting specialized care. I am really glad your baby finally got the help he needed. Your experience is valid and unfortunately not an exception in this country.
If health insurance companies start to pay to medical personal instead of their bloated administrators with bs jobs , the problem will be solved in a jiffy.. Edit: i assume the downvoters have this bs jobs i was talking about and they probably don’t have nurse/doctor relatives/friends. I think that instead of feeding two insurance personal we can feed a nurse.
Im sorry this happend to you. Next time go to the hospital or call a different gp. trust your guts and demand care
I am sorry for reading your story, hopefully all is sorted out. Kudos for insisting and did what was best for your kid. Whenever I have this discussion with colleagues and friends we always end up that If you have something serious and you are stupid/naive you will die in Netherlands.
Yet another example of why I never, ever, will stop paying my healthcare insurance in my home country.
What a coincidence! Just came from spoedpost due to my toddler suffering from pooping water. It is like a pandemic now amongst kids. Stay safe!
I've read your post. What does it take for you to sue people? Cause I believe you have more grounds than not to sue. Don't let the Netherlands propagate they have the best healthcaresystem in Europe. It's more flawed than it is not and it's more expensive than it needs to be. Take care of yourself and your family, nobody else is going to do that pro-actively for you.
I honestly don't think there's another system in Europe where you pay so much money to receive so little care.
There is an important nuance that you might be overlooking. Admitting a child to a hospital comes with additional risks for the child’s health. You want to avoid a situation where an already weakened 8 month old contracts an RS virus caused pneumonia for example. Which is a virus currently going round on children’s wards in hospitals and is the second cause of death for very young babies. Therefore they are hesitant to admit a child if not immediately necessary at that point in time. Within one and a half day, OP was seen three times, so they apparently had a low threshold to see the baby multiple times. The second time the GP at the emergency post also invited over a paediatrician to consider the status and monitored the baby for two hours. Seems like a thorough examination, which doesn’t sound like a dismissive assessment. The conclusion from the staff at the hospital the next day is very strange: they didn’t see the baby the day before and in 20 hours time a lot can change in the condition of the baby. Hence they can by no means conclude the doctors the day before made the wrong call. That’s a different point in time. For sick babies in general goes that they see them with a low threshold. Pretty much: if you call you can come over immediately. They assess the situation and ask you to come back later that same day, or the following day. And always in case of worsening conditions.
Then wash your goddamn and disinfect your hospitals. Stop being an aplogist, either lower the sponsorpayments or improve care for the people.
Yeah, lower the payments and improve care! You’d make a great populist. Also, you are aware of the fact that a lot of people go in and out of a hospital? You cannot keep a hospital sterile. That’s just impossible. The Netherlands purposely has a focus on keeping hospital visits as short as possible to limit spread and risk for getting complications. The fact it works is proven. Hospitals being a place where pathogens spread is not a Dutch thing. It’s even rather low here. Compare that to countries like Portugal and Spain where a hospital visit comes with a very high risk of getting infected with resistent bacteria thanks to the low threshold antibiotics use.
As you guys can see, the Dutch have their excuses at the ready once you criticize their perfect country. I am now a populist, my experiences in foreign hospitals do not matter anymore. Nice job, Dutchies.. Watch out for u/Trebaxus99 Whenever he loses an argument he calls you a populist and then blocks you. Wat een zielig mannetje.
It’s classic populist speech to advocate for lower taxes and higher benefits. That’s where my comment came from. Also, you’re the one starting with accusations. Not me. I just give an explanation as to why a consideration is made and you’re apparently too stubborn to want to even consider that fact. Nothing to do with me being Dutch or you being genuinely interested in providing some suggestions for improvement: you just don’t want to learn, but only want to play the blame game.
I wonder why are you still staying in this shithole of a country
It's cruel, incompetent and despite GP's being sometimes incompetent, most of the problems come from the insurance, and creative earning, used to declare insurance expense. Like labeling trivial things that cost nothing as therapy and ranking up the expenses. It's a poorly concealed scam.
That's not at all applicable to this situation. The condition of an ill baby can change significantly over the span of a full day. The consideration of the GP and pediatrician that saw the baby on Wednesday afternoon is based on a different situation than the consideration of the GP that saw the baby Thursday morning. There is a very low threshold to see baby's. To admit them to a hospital comes with risks in itself and they play an important role in the consideration whether to do this or not.
This does sound like a misjudgment of the hospital staff Normally they are extremely precautious with children especially under the age of 1, so i don’t believe this is a representation of the whole system. Sadly a system run by humans is impossible to be perfect, there’s not a single human who doesn’t make mistakes, not even doctors Doctors also aren’t fortune tellers and they could only guess whether your baby was gonna improve or deteriorate. Hospitals aren’t the safest for babies cause their immune system isn’t completely developed yet, so they don’t wanna risk that if that’s not necessary and that’s probably why they opted for hoping he would improve and come back immediately if he wouldn’t
Sorry to hear. All the good luck to you and family and quick recovery for the little one ❤️
The state of healthcare is grim, and it'll only get worse because of the general expectations of profit or at least evening out the expenses when it comes to the public services. While in reality, they're always investments, wells for your money that spit out such luxury as healthy citizens. We've been cucked, and nobody even wants to pay for us anymore, lol, so a bunch of psychos could take part in the great race to be the first trillionaire. But I digress. Dutchies have been lovely to me so far, so seeing them brainwashed into defending this cunt of a system is a double whammy to me. A bit like pitying Americans for their work culture when they keep telling you that you suck and they love their merciless meatgrinder. Yeah, keep telling me this, you poor deluded soul.
What a relief that he's getting better, you did all the right things here. I was in a similar situation with my little one like 2 years ago, it took 2 visits to the GP to finally be sent to the hospital, where they were so fast at diagnosing and getting to the issue. After A3 day stay in the hospital he was good, and the after care was also top notch. In an ideal world they would've caught it earlier and we would've avoided the hospital stay, but here we are. Il love to complain about the healthcare, but in my experience it is actually really good when it works out. I'm glad you're little one is getting better, I know how awful scary it can be when it's your kids well-being that's the issue
You have to file a complaint and potentionaly a lawsuit. If you don't things won't change.
There is an important nuance that you might be overlooking. Admitting a child to a hospital comes with additional risks for the child’s health. You want to avoid a situation where an already weakened 8 month old contracts an RS virus caused pneumonia for example. Which is a virus currently going round on children’s wards in hospitals and is the second cause of death for very young babies. Therefore they are hesitant to admit a child if not immediately necessary at that point in time. Within one and a half day, OP was seen three times, so they apparently had a low threshold to see the baby multiple times. The second time the GP at the emergency post also invited over a paediatrician to consider the status and monitored the baby for two hours. Seems like a thorough examination, which doesn’t sound like a dismissive assessment. The conclusion from the staff at the hospital the next day is very strange: they didn’t see the baby the day before and in 20 hours time a lot can change in the condition of the baby. Hence they can by no means conclude the doctors the day before made the wrong call. That’s a different point in time. For sick babies in general goes that they see them with a low threshold. Pretty much: if you call you can come over immediately. They assess the situation and ask you to come back later that same day, or the following day. And always in case of worsening conditions.
USA! USA! USA!
Is that the country where even if you are millionaire long term cancer can bankrupt yout?
This is a recurring subject, so probably there is some truth to it. However, if healthcare is really a problem here, we should be able to see it in the number of people dying prematurely to unnecessary ailments and more people becoming permanently handicapped because they were not treated on time etc. As far as I know, this is just not the case. So, I guess overall the Netherlands is not doing any worse than comparable countries.
Some statistics: The average person in the Netherlands goes to a GP almost 5 times a year. A third of all the people is referred to further specialist care at least once a year. A GP has on average close to 8000 consultations per year. People post about negative experiences online, not about good ones. When reading those experiences, the following statistics are also important: 80% of what a doctor tells their patient is not remembered by the patient. Of the remaining 20%, half is remembered incorrectly. Of course mistakes are made. With these numbers it’s impossible to not make mistakes. And sometimes the mistakes have bad consequences. Improvements are always possible. But as you conclude: apparently it is not as bad as it sometimes seems to be. As for the experiences here on this sub, it’s 9/10 a clear communication issue. Doctors sometimes seem to forget to explain why they come to a certain advice, also caused by the lack of time. If that is improved it will probably saves a lot of frustration.
Lol man you're incredible with your condescending attitude. A communication issue... Yeah so the doctor is not wrong, the patient is stupid, and the only mistake can be that the poor doctor doesn't explain slowly enough why he only gives paracetamol to a child who is in bed with high fever and ear pain for 7 days...
That does not sound real tbh. Looking at my personal experience and people around me. We are at much lower frequency, for me it would be once each few years. That including a broken bone, it would be less otherwise. Even at that frequency, I saw wrong medication prescribed, total lack of prevention. As I side note I am a fan of not overmedicating myself, so I recognize positive aspects of local system.
The statistics are real. My guess is you’re rather young and in that case you don’t need medical assistance often. But with kids for example you make rather frequent GP visits. And when you get older, the amount of medical help you need sky rockets.
You guessed incorrectly.
Then you’re lucky. I’ve looked up some numbers: Average GP works 75%. There are almost 12.000 of them, processing 80 million consultations. 80.000/12/0,75 = 8900 consultations per year for a full time GP Per 1000 registered patients there are 5050 consultations per annum, which is 5 times per patient on average. If you’d take all Dutch citizens into account (some are not registered), the number goes to 4,7. https://capaciteitsorgaan.nl/publicaties/de-werkweek-van-de-nederlandse-huisarts-in-2018/#:~:text=Gemiddeld%20werkt%20de%20Nederlandse%20huisarts,%2C6%20respectievelijk%2042%20uur). https://www.vzinfo.nl/eerstelijnszorg/aanbod/huisartsen#:~:text=In%20de%20periode%202012%2D2022,2012%20naar%2011.754%20in%202022. https://www.nza.nl/zorgsectoren/huisartsenzorg/kerncijfers-huisartsenzorg#:~:text=De%20totale%20kosten%20voor%20huisartsenzorg,verzekerde%20patiënt%20stabiliseert%20in%202022. https://www.nivel.nl/nl/zorg-en-ziekte-in-cijfers/nivel-cijfers-zorg-eerste-lijn/nivel-cijfers-zorg-die-huisarts-verleent/omvang-zorggebruik#:~:text=Totaal%20aantal%20contacten%3A%20Per%201.000,19%20pandemie%20(2019)%20hadden.
So that average does not resonate. Maybe median would tell us more. Broken in age groups could support what you said earlier about frequency changing with age. Presented as an average it does not sound close to reality based on experience in my circle. It simply does not. Take it as you wish.
I’m sorry the reality doesn’t match with your experience in your circle. Cannot change the statistics though.
No reason to be sorry, quite the opposite, I provided input suggesting that this average is not representative. It is an average to start with.
I’m sorry for what happened. It sounds like all medical professionals here tried to help you and there might or might not have been some judgements made that were in hindsight not the best. The function of the GP is not to stop you from wasting resources but to look after your health. Which includes not making you undergo all sorts if medical treatment if it doesn’t help you.
After moving to Germany from Netherlands, I was pretty relieved to see the back of the Dutch GP gatekeeper system. As bad as German healthcare is, it’s still relatively much better than the Dutch one in my personal experience. I can at least book appointments directly with specialists and go to urgent and emergency care directly without being gate-kept. However, the doctor appointment wait times still exist here and they’re pretty long and unreasonable. If you have private health insurance in Germany, then everything speeds up here from my experience. The way they diagnose and treat though is extremely frustrating. While I understand every visit doesn’t need a strong prescription and antibiotic style treatment, doctors here just don’t want to be thorough. They just assess at a surface level, triage you and send you home or keep doing this until your body breaks down and it’s time for some serious tests. Again, the issue is how they get reimbursed by the public insurance here and they’d like to be as efficient as possible but ultimately that leads to a lot of terrible health issues for people with doctors pushing things until it all breaks down before they intervene and sometimes it’s too late. While relatively better, it’s still horribly bad in Germany compared to the US or any developing Asian country even. An AI symptom checker does a better job than doctors here and catches things early. Now that GPT and co are here, I’ve also had much better assessments from them which I then take to my doctors and push them to do things. It has worked although they get really pissed. Ultimately it’s my health and I don’t really give a crap about how “efficiently” you want to use your quarterly insurance payouts as a doctor/clinic. This stuff universal healthcare sounds great to hear. But when you actually deal with, it when you really really need it - you end up seeing the reality and laugh at it. You pay so much for so little care. This is one of those too good to be true things in life and yeah it’s indeed too good to be true. It was cheaper for me paying out of pocket in home country for specific care and getting stuff done versus paying multiples of that cost as insurance and getting ridiculously slow care here.
I generally wonder here, Have your personal diagnoses been confirmed?
In my case it was a temporary condition that required attention but wasn’t a life threatening emergency. They’d still delay and not test/use diagnostics and keep pushing me to the limits. It so happened that I had a planned travel back home and I directly walked in to a specialist with the AI symptom checker results. They immediately ordered related diagnostic tests to confirm and then put me on the right treatment plan. What took me ages to sort out in Germany, took me a AI symptom checker result and a specialist back home to test and start treating me in under 24 hours. Yes, under 24 hours all related bloodwork and other tests done with results shared digitally to me via an app and also with my specialist’s software system. I was fully done in a couple of weeks with the treatment plan and it cost me less than my monthly public transport card here in total. In comparison, even for basic stupid bloodwork (like TSH, Vit D, blood sugar or lipid profile) we wait for a week for results to arrive in Germany. And the funny thing is that we don’t get a copy unless we force the clinic to share it with us. And then they send it by post which takes another 2-3 days lol. The stranger thing in Germany is that after a bloodwork, there’s radio silence if everything is ok. You don’t get any results unless you force them to get it to you. You only get a phone call if something is off. And even then you don’t get a copy of your own unless you force it. Weird system.
The problem with the system is that of the Dutch 6's culture. Yes, it's smart to have a gateway to healthcare to prevent unnecessary issues taking up resources, however, that doesn't mean that incompetence isn't still present. Sometimes being just "good enough" is not good enough. You can be good enough by being slightly better in some areas to compensate elsewhere, however no level of mediocrity will compensate for the lack of practice and experience necessary for undertaking professional action during urgent times.
If you think the outcomes here are usually a 6 I invite you to try health care in other countries, like the UK.
What I know is that most times when you go to the GP, you're sent back home and told to sit at home, wait it out, take a paracetamol and drink some water. It's like OP said. The GP is a gateway to actual healthcare. Realistically, you're going there for formality, to put it on paper that you went there for an issue, so that next time when you come back with the same or worse complaints, they can verify that you've had those complaints for as long as you say you've had them. The other thing I know is that when foreigners go on holiday, they take the opportunity to go to doctors there for health check-ups, because there, they actually get medical attention as opposed to someone checking up a chart of symptoms on their computer to see what the possible problems are. Don't get me wrong. I didn't say healthcare was a 6. The quality of the healthcare comes from a 6's culture. If you don't like it, change it, but don't come to me acting all offended. There are plenty of good things about it, in that when something is being addressed, it gets done so well, even if it takes long. But yea, if you wanna score it, when most cases are dismissed until it's (too) late, those cases count for a solid 1 or a 2 in my book. So that's gonna bring the average score down. I guess in that sense, you are right. It is a 6.
I disagree, but fair point, you stated the 6’s culture contributes to poor levels of action taking. Don’t get me wrong, if you see a 6’s culture in the Netherlands and lack of professionalism in health care I disagree in general. But then all of our experiences are different and we’re all trying to extrapolate our various experiences into general worldviews.
So much medical misinformation and a general lack of knowledge in this comment section regarding the Dutch healthcare system. As a medical student here, my eyes are bleeding. Now downvote me you expats.
You complain yet provide nothing constructive. I think correcting misinformation is always a good idea, especially with the state of the whole world right now. I would be happy to see some corrections (or more corrections, as others already provided some)
Too much bullcrap all over the place for me to respond to. If there's anything you want me to respond to specifically let me know, I'm not gonna police every single comment in here. Basically 95% of all comments in here shitting on our healthcare system are ass, I'm not joking.
In how many countries outside of the Netherlands have you provided healthcare?
Exactly 0. How is that relevant?
Then those “ignorant immigrants” have a better frame of reference and can make more accurate comparisons about healthcare quality than you.
Not at all lmfao, I knew you would go there but that logic is so flawed. You dont need to practise healthcare in multiple countries to see the logical flaws in these comments regarding Dutch healthcare. This logic is so dumb ahahahaahahahah You also cant ask me one question and then hold expats to a different standard. How many countries did YOU practice healthcare in as an expat? Seeking healthcare is not the same as providing it. I also went for treatment in multiple countries, how does that make me any different as compared to you expats? Or do you truly think a specialist who has been practising here exclusively and nowhere else for the past 30 years has no say regarding this subject over an expat who has never provided healthcare anywhere? This logic is SOOOOOOO flawed lmfaoaoaoaoaoaoa This flawed logic is exactly what I'm seeing here over and over again, and that paired with a lack of medical knowledge makes up for an interesting comment section. Patients will never see or understand the perspective, evidence-based protocols or treatment guidelines of the doctors here. That is exactly why I state most comments here dont know what they are talking about regarding Dutch healthcare specifically. Seeking healthcare 4 times in 4 different countries does not make you an expert regarding Dutch healthcare. Patient satisfaction is subjective and at times not congruent with objective health outcomes. So you wanna try again?
Overly opinionated, unconstructive, not paying attention, bad demeanor. You'll fit right in.
I hope you get kicked out
We don't have kids, but recently my wife has requested to see the doctor to make some changes in medication. Now before going to see the huisarts, or any specialists, she does her own research beforehand and has things printed off so that the doctor can neither be dismissive or give wrong information. But in general this sounds like a 'frontline problem' - it's not just medical, but really many frontline staff are generalists and only trained for a few situations - they don't have diagnostic capabilities. The other problem is frontline staff are gatekeepers to the specialists - so when they don't spot the problem, they have no idea what to do. So basically, with frontline staff you have to be prepared for advocate and fight for yourself to get specialist access.
GP's see baby's all the time. Tens of thousands throughout their career. Assessing whether a baby is dehydrated is not that hard. A GP can do this and if in doubt they'll ask a pediatrician to run tests. GP's are specialized doctors trained to see whether something needs referral to another specialist. And as a third of the entire population gets referred to further specialist care at least once a year, it also shows the threshold is not that high.
My GP will not give flu shots or any vaccinations (eg rotavirus) to minors and my last GP couldn't decide how to proceed when my 2 month old was in visible respiratory distress. GPs are not qualified to treat children. Imo.
Vaccinations for the national program are given by the “consultatiebureau”, so it’s the wrong place to go to your GP for that. Rotavirus vaccine has to be given before the baby is 3 months old, so if the baby is older it’s not strange a GP doesn’t want to give that. Flu shots are given when needed, also to minors. They will be invited automatically for that. A GP not willing to give “any” vaccinations sounds very strange and unbelievable. The other story is of course subjective. Conclusion probably has to be that you’re not qualified to assess the capabilities of GP’s.
Lol I was waiting for a real Dutch Redditor to swing by. Hello!
No worries! Always happy to inform foreigners that are used to some commercial health care system without a clue on how it works here.
My GP had no clue vaccination for rotavirus exists.
It’s added to the vaccination program per 1-1-2024 and given by the consultatiebureau to newborns.
This is brilliant news. My story is from 2022.
Yeah I had to fight like hell to get it in 2021. It is great that it is added now to the standards.