The slide never changes. A line runs across it with small circles on it.
First visit, diagnosis, consultation, treatment, follow ups. Someone has typed Patient Journey across the top. They point to it and the room nods. It is a good map. It helps the team see where people get lost.
23 floors down, a man sits outside the doctor’s door. His results are in a white envelope. He has not opened it yet. He walks to the parking machine twice, once to pay, once to check he paid. His wife holds his coat, and it is 38 degrees outside.
Nobody told him he was travelling.
The word was made for and by the people in the meeting room. It helps them look at the service one step at a time. It was never meant to leave the room. But it got into the welcome email and the treatment page. It made its way into the leaflet at the front desk and the letter with his appointment time on it. The word sits there, telling a man with a closed envelope that he bought a ticket.
Patients never call it a journey. They say the wait, the week before the results, after the scan, when I got home. They count it in days. Some count it in hours.
The map is a good map.
The man 23 floors down was never meant to read it.