Patient’s simple act of kindness eases hospital chaos

SAN­DRA L BLOOD

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What be­gan as an or­di­nary day as a walk-in pa­tient re­quir­ing ser­vice at a pub­lic hos­pi­tal for Ju­nior Teles­ford on May 26, evolved in­to him un­ex­pect­ed­ly be­com­ing one of the most cru­cial el­e­ments of ser­vice that day.

Teles­ford be­came a hu­man num­ber-dis­pens­ing ma­chine.

A take-a-num­ber sys­tem af­fords vis­i­tors/cus­tomers/pa­tients the re­spect of be­ing served/at­tend­ed to in an or­der­ly/well-or­gan­ised fash­ion—pre­vent­ing chaos and en­cour­ag­ing fair­ness.

The res­i­dent of Coun­cil­man Gar­dens at Sixth Av­enue, Mal­ick, Barataria, ar­rived at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex in Mt Hope at 3.15 am to get a num­ber that would se­cure an ear­ly spot.

“Reach in the wee hours of the morn­ing and take a num­ber if you want to be at­tend­ed to be­fore 10 am,” Teles­ford said he told him­self.

Teles­ford ar­rived at the hos­pi­tal’s phar­ma­cy to fill a pre­scrip­tion, but said to his sur­prise there was no num­ber dis­penser or any type of num­ber sys­tem that would en­sure or­der, which is con­trary to what he usu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ences.

“At 4.15 am, peo­ple start­ed trick­ling in and ask­ing: ‘What hap­pen to the num­bers?’ But my on­ly an­swer was ‘I don’t know’,” re­vealed Teles­ford.

“Peo­ple were sub­ject­ed to re­mem­ber­ing who they came af­ter and men­tal­ly stor­ing a num­ber.

“Hours were pass­ing by, and as the ar­rival of pa­tients con­tin­u­ous­ly swelled and pa­tients be­came in­creas­ing­ly ir­ri­ta­ble, I told my­self, ‘I’ll try an ini­tia­tive and see if it will work and if peo­ple will co­op­er­ate.’ I went back to my car, which was in the carpark, re­turned with a book and pen, cre­at­ed num­bers, and dis­trib­uted them in the or­der pa­tients re­mem­bered ar­riv­ing.

“This all tran­spired at 7 am when I re­quest­ed every­one to form a line and let’s wait for the phar­ma­cy to open.”

Teles­ford con­tin­ued, “Pa­tients be­gan com­mend­ing me. I was as­ton­ished. It turned out to be a very suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion, as every­one was pleased with the ini­tia­tive as every­thing went well.”

Teles­ford said he as­cribes his nat­ur­al abil­i­ty to show kind­ness to his par­ents, Alexan­der Teles­ford, who passed away, his moth­er Aman­da Lind­say, and a pas­tor. He said kind­ness is a qual­i­ty which he em­bod­ies whole­heart­ed­ly and has passed on to his lov­ing wife of 19 years, Jil­lian Bil­ly-Teles­ford, two chil­dren, Jevon, 23, and Gabrielle, 19, and nu­mer­ous chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Re­gard­ing my com­mu­ni­ty chil­dren, I be­came their adopt­ed dad through host­ing sport­ing events, Christ­mas par­ties, which are all fund­ed by me, but above all, of­fer­ing them good ad­vice.”

Teles­ford said his child­hood wasn’t the best, as he didn’t com­plete his school­ing. But through the help of a pas­tor, he learned join­ery at age 16 and de­vel­oped four very dear hob­bies: DJing, meet­ing peo­ple, teach­ing the young ones around him the art of play­ing mu­sic, and en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to recog­nise and fol­low the good in them­selves.

“My words to cit­i­zens of sweet T&T are: Nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate the gift and tal­ent you have. Mine has proven to be or­gan­i­sa­tion­al skills. I want to thank the cit­i­zens who were wait­ing to re­ceive their med­ica­tion from the phar­ma­cy on that day and co­op­er­at­ed with me, and ad­di­tion­al­ly, Michael El­cock, of Tu­na­puna, for see­ing val­ue in my kind­ness, com­mend­ing me, and vol­un­tar­i­ly shar­ing my sto­ry.”