Letter to the Editor: What cost is privacy at Cairns Base Hospital?

• I picked up a friend at Cairns Base Hospital last week.
  
  Whilst in the recovery room with several patients and their carers I witnessed a “Monty Python” moment.
  
  A young man who I presume was a doctor, came into the room and proceeded to tell a patient, a teenage girl, and her mother the results of her test. Good news was she doesn’t have a cancerous tumour but some swelling in her intestine. No big deal according to the Doc, it can be sorted.
  
  My question... Why was it necessary to broadcast it to the entire waiting room? I can only presume had the result been less positive the young lady would have had to share it with a room full of stranger.
  
  I appreciate that medical staff work long and hard for the benefit of their patients. I don’t accept that there is not a private place that the Doc can take them to discuss their results.
  
  The “Monty Python” part of this story is that the “Doc” was munching on a salad roll from when he entered the room, through the conversation with his patient and on his exit
  
  Hard to have respect eh.
  
  Janice Parsons, Cairns