hey guys welcome back to how to switzerland sarah here today just a casual cell phone video
filming on the floor of my living room because i just want this to be a relaxed little
story time about going to the doctor in switzerland
so i really wanted to film this because i actually went to the doctor's office three times this week
which is something that i do not typically do in switzerland i guess since i've been living
in switzerland on and off and going to school here and that kind of stuff i always put off anything
medical until i was back in the u.s so um usually like dental appointments doctor appointments i
would tend to do it while i'm on vacation in the u.s or things like that but yeah this past week
i was really sick and not getting better after you know many many days probably after about 14 days i
was not feeling good so i said okay we really have to go to the doctor and see what is going on in
case i need like you know to get something taken care of that's serious or whatever so finally
i decided to go to the doctor i do not like going to the doctor at all i can just say that i do have
a lot of anxiety around going to anything medical and i also have a massive phobia of anything um
like about needles and blood and that kind of stuff so i tend to avoid it at all costs and i
know it's especially scary to go to the doctor in a foreign country and i know a lot of you watching
are in the process of moving to switzerland or you're interested in moving to switzerland
so more than likely at some point you're going to need to go to the doctor and i know it can be
you know like i said it's a little intimidating and scary because you're in like a foreign place
it's not what you're used to and you don't know what to expect so hopefully with this video i can
um walk you through what happened to me so maybe it gives you a better idea of what might happen
when you go to the doctor okay so like i said i went to the doctor three times this week so i'll
try to talk you through each of those appointments so the first appointment was my um first time ever
at this doctor so i'm considered a new patient so there's a little bit more involved in that first
appointment so basically we walk into the office it's what's called like a group practice like um
because of the type of insurance that we have i think it's called like hmo we have to go to
this specific doctor's office we can't go to any um doctor that we want based on our insurance
you can choose plans like that where you can go anywhere but they're more expensive so we went
to this practice and walked in and the guy at the reception just asked for our insurance information
and that was it really he just asked for that and here in switzerland the insurance cards have like
the chip on them um similar to like your debit card it looks exactly the same like the chip
on your debit card you have those on health insurance cards here um in the u.s we didn't
ever have anything like like that on our health insurance cards it was just like a piece of
plastic with your policy and your name and stuff but here there's like you know a chip on it so
obviously they can scan that and get whatever data that they need so he just looked at the
card scanned it quickly and we sat down i was kind of surprised that they didn't give me a clipboard
to fill out i feel like if you go to the doctor in the u.s they always give you like a clipboard
where you have to like fill out your medical history and like all that kind of stuff and i
didn't get anything they're just like okay we have the insurance you know you can wait in the waiting
room so we waited for a while in the waiting room there were actually a good amount of people there
and one thing that i noticed in switzerland so the waiting room was actually a closed glass room like
it had a door on it and there were quite a lot of people in there and every time somebody would come
in like they would greet everybody which was kind of strange to me so somebody would walk in and
be like cruzi and everyone would be like hello like that like everyone was greeting each other
um whenever somebody went and or sometimes when people left they would even say like goodbye and
stuff so it was kind of different um interaction i guess people were really kind of engaging with
each other and that did happen every time i went so i guess that's kind of a cultural norm here
to greet the people sitting in the waiting room with you and i guess since it's like a closed
room it feels a little bit more normal to do that so we waited and then i got called to go in
so in the u.s how it normally worked is if you're waiting in a waiting room um a nurse or like an
assistant of some sort will come out and be like sarah and then you know you walk back you get put
in an empty room um they might check a few things the nurse or the assistant and then usually you
wait in the room for quite a while for the doctor that's my experience going to the doctor and here
it was not like that at all so actually i was just waiting in the waiting room and then first of all
they don't call you by your first name here like i think in the us they always said sarah but here
they said frau norse fraunhors um so they called me by my last name and um then like they shook
my hand and that was actually the doctor so the actual doctor she came and got me from the waiting
room and took me directly to her office so there's no waiting like she just came and got me when she
was ready i guess and then i went in her office and i wish i had a picture um i didn't really
want to take pictures of it but you know whatever obviously but um it was very different than like
in the us i found that they're usually very small rooms typically no window and usually you sit on a
like a bed that's covered in paper but here the room was very large it had a ton of windows
obviously that's a huge plus and um there was like a bed that you lay on but like there was
no paper or plastic or anything on it so i figured i'm supposed to sit in the chairs because over to
the other side of the room there was like a big desk with um like three chairs on one side and
then one chair obviously for the doctor and like a computer and all that kind of stuff so she brought
me in and then like we sat down at her desk it felt kind of like you know when you go to the
bank and you're like sitting like with somebody telling them information and they're typing it in
it was similar to that because we sat down and then that's where she actually asked me about
my medical history so the doctor was actually the one asking allergies like have you had this have
you had that do you have a family history of this um the things that i'm used to filling out like on
a form she just asked me everything and was typing it in as we um went along so we basically answered
all those questions got that out of the way and then she said okay so what brings you in today
and i told her you know i was having really severe ear and throat pain for two weeks that wasn't
going away and then she said okay like let's take a look so she pulled you know paper over like the
the bed thing and i went and sat on there and she just looked in my ears and in my throat and all
that kind of stuff and she could see that it was infected um but yeah i'm not a medical person but
when you have infections they can either be viral or bacterial and viral infections there's nothing
you can do to really make it go away faster in terms of medicine and that kind of stuff but if
it is bacterial that's when you need antibiotics and she was unable to tell which is normal it's
difficult to tell the difference between a viral and a bacterial infection she said like based on
what you described and what i see i think it's viral but it might be bacterial um but the only
way i can determine if it's bacterial is by giving you a blood test and i did not want to do that i
thought i thought that was a bit strange as well because in the u.s i've had this kind of stuff
many times and i've never had to give blood in order to get diagnosed and she said the reason
is she really does not want to give antibiotics if she's not 100 sure you know that i need it
and um she can tell you know if it's bacterial and if it requires antibiotics through the blood
so um we said you know and then she said but basically if you don't want to give blood that's
totally fine i don't think it's bacterial but um you know take ibuprofen get some rest and if you
don't feel good in like three or four days come back in and we'll see if we can figure it out
another way so that was about it for the first visit i think so i could definitely tell that
here there are a lot just from that first visit they're a lot more like conservative
in how they like prescribe medicine they seem very hesitant to um give you anything like prescription
grade like she did give me medicine but it was all like stuff you can buy over the counter
and yeah they're super conservative about prescribing antibiotics whereas in the us
i've been prescribed antibiotics over the phone you know you can like call your doctor like i
don't feel good i have like a sore throat and the doctor will just like call in a prescription um
for a lot of different things just over the phone obviously the us is a lot looser about pills and
you know medicine and that kind of stuff um and then there you go three four days went by and i
was still feeling horrible i was feeling about the same okay so for the next appointment it
was a saturday and we went in they were only open for like four hours on a saturday but we managed
to get in but i'm super grateful that they were open i was quite surprised that they're open on
a saturday given just the opening hours of things in switzerland and this time we walk in and since
they have our insurance and all that you i basically just said my name and they said sit
in the waiting room so i sat in the waiting room and this time the lady that came and got me from
the waiting room um she worked in like the lab you know where you give blood and that kind of stuff
so the lady got me and took me directly into the lab and the same lady oh i get like lightheaded
just talking about it i hate this kind of stuff but the same lady that pulled me from the waiting
room actually um took my blood so they could test for bacterial infection so they did that that was
actually really quick they did run it and luckily they found that there was no signs of a bacterial
infection in my blood um so yeah they did the blood test and now i'm sitting in the lab waiting
in the lab and now the doctor comes to the lab and gets me from the lab to take me to her
office so again i didn't have to get put in a room and wait the doctor came and got me directly and
took me into the office and you know we addressed everything she went over the results of the of the
blood work she gave further recommendations um and she said yeah there's like some issue in my ear
and i should come back and get um that sorted out as well and she gave me more medicine and stuff
um and that was basically it she was super super knowledgeable and um friendly by the way i should
say um it kind of goes without saying but they all spoke extremely good english i never like force
people to speak english like if they want to speak german that's totally totally fine but it seems
like they they prefer to if they can tell that you are american um i did have matias with me as
well though of course sometimes the doctor might be looking for a word that they might not know
right off the top of their head in english so yeah that was basically it so yeah the blood sample was
negative so i didn't need antibiotics and she gave me a different medication like over-the-counter
again over-the-counter type of thing and said come back in like two days and we're gonna like
clean out your ear and we're gonna like look at something else in your ear to see if there's
like uh something else going on in there or whatever and then for the third appointment
which was actually this morning so i'm trying to film this while this is fresh in my head um
went in said my name sat down so the same lady who got me from the waiting room is the one who
uh took care of my ear and then that was it the doctor came into the room where i was and she
talked me through everything and said things are looking better and whatever so i think that's it
i don't know if this is helpful at all i'm just trying to describe you know kind of what happened
so you can know a little bit more what to expect and actually some things that are
slightly different i feel like the doctors here like do a lot more um i feel like in the u.s
you always had like nurses and like lab people and assistants and stuff and the doctor would really
just come in for like five minutes and look at you and be out really really fast whereas here
i mean the doctor i had today she was drawing i'm not kidding she was drawing me diagrams of like
ears and all the tubes and like you know really making sure that i understand the problem and
she spent a long time with me explaining how i can prevent things like this in the future
and stuff and she was extremely extremely helpful and like just caring and it felt a lot different
going to the doctor here um yeah it was just a little bit more like it didn't feel as rushed
you know what i mean um which was really nice and also the doctors here were all in like uniforms
like some sort of scrubs or something whereas i feel like in the us they were normally in like
were they always into like just like a tie like if it was a guy i feel like he was usually just
in like a like a nice outfit like business casual whereas here um of course if you're in a hospital
in the states they all have like scrubs on and stuff but i'm talking if you just go to like
a general doctor like i did i feel like it was usually they were doctors usually not in uniform
but here they were um so yeah and then the last thing that's obviously interesting which
i'm gonna have to make a second video is the billing so i'm gonna be honest i have no idea
how much all of this is going to cost as an american the first thing that i think is like
why do i keep going back this is going to be so expensive i don't want to go three times like this
is good is this gonna cost me like a thousand dollars like how much is it gonna cost and um
basically we don't know like i asked um about this is our first time using our swiss insurance
and um we asked like do we have to pay anything upfront because again in the us in my experience
you pay like this co-pay right when you go to the doctor like 20 to 30 dollars you pay that
upfront and then of course things get worked out with your insurance or whatever but um when we
went we didn't have to pay anything all three times we didn't have to pay anything they just
said um we are going to build your insurance and then you will get they said like a copy
um so i don't know if the copy is gonna have a bill attached to it or not i tried to look
in my insurance policy to find details about if we have a copay or if we just have to pay
everything until we meet our deductible what's included and i couldn't really find anything
um i should look a little bit deeper but i figure i'll just wait a week or two until
we get the bill and see what happens and then i can even go over it with you guys how much
all of this costs because yeah i mean healthcare in switzerland it's not socialized it's not free
it's it you know it can get expensive not us expensive but yeah we'll see how much it costs
for these doctors appointments i think that's it i have some notes here but yeah overall i had a
great experience given everything given my anxiety around going to the doctor and stuff i feel like
they were very accommodating to me and yeah that's it anything to add matthias did i miss anything
no thank you i cover it okay all right i hope you found this helpful or interesting in some way you
guys if you liked it if you like these casual videos let me know in the comments leave this
video a thumbs up make sure to subscribe if you are new around here and i'll talk to you soon bye
you