Complaints about docs who keep mum

Star: PETALING JAYA: Doctors who do not take the trouble to explain to patients about their illness and the medicines they are prescribing has led to complaints of poor service in the profession.
The Malaysian Medical Association said other reasons for the complaints could be that patients “expect the unreasonable from their doctors”.
There were also complaints from unhappy patients who went to different doctors and ended up misinterpreting the different opinions of their ailments.
“Patients must play their role by not doctor-hopping while doctors should improve on their communication skills,” said MMA president Datuk Dr Teoh Siang Chin, adding that these could stop people from having a negative view of the profession.
He was responding to complaints on the deteriorating standard of service at clinics.
Dr Teoh said that the cornerstone of medicine was in a strong doctor-patient relationship.
He said doctors had been advised to inform their patients about the type of medicines that they were prescribing.
“Some doctors are apprehensive that patients will self-medicate if they know the names of the medicines.
“However, the policy of the MMA is to have doctors label their medicines.”
The declining standard of service has led to the Foreign Workers Medical Examination Monitoring Agency (Fomema) suspending over 100 clinics on its panel to curb irregularities in the examination of foreign workers.
These clinics had not maintained a proper register of medical examinations, and they operated X-ray machines without a licence, submitted identical X-rays for more than one worker and had not kept records of specimens collected.