Long before she became the head of Singapore’s national agency for design, DesignSingapore Council’s Dawn Lim already experienced the cost of bad design – during the two decades she spent as a caregiver to her late parents.
In a local hospital just last year, Lim had to collect a biopsy sample taken from her father.
A biopsy is a medical procedure where a tiny portion of body tissue is taken to be examined in a lab. It’s often used to check for diseases like cancer or better understand abnormal growths and conditions.
The process, in theory, sounded simple: Go to the clinic, get the forms signed by his doctor, then let the hospital take over.
In reality, the doctor told her to take the forms to the medical records office.
“I asked, ‘Well, why can’t you just send it over?’ To me, that was the logical assumption, as (the staff) should know the hospital better than me,” the 43-year-old recalled.
The response was clear: She’d requested for the biopsy, so she had to bring the forms to the office herself.
After a bout of “challenging” wayfinding through the hospital, she found the office in the basement – only to be asked which type of slide the biopsy sample should be placed on.
“I said, ‘I have no clue because the doctor ordered it, and it’s going to the lab for a test, right?’” Lim said.
“And the staff replied, ‘Yeah, but I need to know which slides you want.’”
Lim asked if they could call the clinic to check – and was told, again, that she had to make the call herself as the requester. But the hospital being a public one, the phone lines were near impossible to get through.
She had no choice but to choose a slide herself, picking from what made more sense.
She was also told to expect a call to “collect the slides” eventually. The biopsy sample, or body tissue, is placed on glass slides before being sent to a pathologist who examines the cells for diseases.
“So I asked, ‘Why am I collecting them? Shouldn’t they be sent to the lab?’ I also tried asking them to call the clinic instead. Both times, they told me: ‘You are the requester.’”
Now able to laugh about her situation, Lim told CNA Women: “And what was I supposed to do with the biopsy slides then? Put them in my fridge?”
