Having turned 40, the doctor I usually take my son to informed me I qualify for free blood and urine tests. Good, I thought - I’ll go for that. My wife and I often talk about getting proper medicals, but are too busy to actually do it.
So I did the tests, and all looked good except that my white-platelet count was below normal. Should be 120 to 400 (some sources say 150 to 450) but it was 107. He advised coming back to redo the test a month or so later. I did, and scored 105. Come back again, he says. A couple of months later, my white-platelet count was 99. Mumbling something about my spleen (splenetic sequestration is a common cause of thrombocytopenia), he gave me the name of a specialist at the nearest medical center, National Chengkung University Hospital in Tainan.
Yesterday I finally dragged myself there, and told the whole story to the specialist. She looked at my gums and sent me off for blood tests. One good thing about a big hospital is that you need wait only an hour for the results, not days. According to NCKUH, my white-platelet count is 153. She said blood tests done by smaller hospitals (or farmed out to private-sector labs by clinics) are sometimes unreliable. The patient just before me, she said (I saw the guy, 40-something like me, looked pretty healthy like me) had had the same experience - worrisome results from a local clinic, but NCKUH could find nothing wrong with him.
I wonder if labs ever give good news when they should be giving bad news. A morning and NT$510 gone; you could say wasted, but I now enjoy peace of mind. Anyway, I advise you folk to do your tests as a major hospital, where the equipment gets recalibrated more often…
I would go the whole 9 yards and take a full medical -at least the basic bloodwork/chest X ray/ultrasound combo at least every two years, especially if you have certain health issues.
The only problem I see with big hospitals is follow up, especially with cronic conditions. Too big hospitals also have quality issues -not to name names- just because they rely too much on name and not on action. So, yes, as with everything else, caveat emptor when it comes to medical care. Ask, choose, investigate.
Always get a second opinion. A hospital in Taiwan told me I had leukemia in 2003…I didn’t, it was just a cold had run down my system/white blood cell count, and it caused unnecessary worry. Go to Adventist’s English speaking clinic.
At this point though, I think I’d get a second opinion on the second opinion. What if it’s NCKUH that was wrong. Not as likely, but hardly impossible I’m sure.
I’m a new here and suddenly I realize that many have suffered from bad experience of medical help in Taiwan. Well, I have to admit that I’m a Taiwanese and to be honest, I have a medical background. In my opinion, to find a doctor who can listen and take exams carefully is far more important than going to a big hospital for a time-consuming check-up. For instance, when we find a low platelet count, we will ask the LAB to read the blood smear with eyes and make sure if there’s clump of platelets, which will fool the machine to count them less. In addition, we also depend on the appearance of our patients. Too detailed and exhausting exams occasionally frighten our patients. So a small hospital is not necessarily worse than a big one. It’s the doctor that counts.
Ha. Taiwanese doctors are literally killing me with steroids. Long, long story. Anyway, I had to go in for a neck scan Saturday. The ultrasound tech took a zillion photos but of course, I can’t get any information until I go back to the dr. who ordered the scan. But I won’t be going back to her because she barely paid any attention at all to what’s going on with me. Anyway, sorry, I’m kind of going off on a rant from Kevin’s reply. Don’t mean to hijack the thread.
But you do have to be careful. You’re not supposed to “question” your doctor here, but I was diagnosed with throat cancer here, about 10 years ago, because the doctor couldn’t find my tonsils. I didn’t know what had prompted diagnosis until I got to the specialist I was refered to. The specialist asked me why I had seen the other doctor (I’d gone for a sore throat), and then asked if I’d had my tonsils removed as a child, which I had. Case closed. Not cancer, just a childhood surgery.
No, you can’t question a doctor, but a doctor can chew you out for abusing a drug that ever other damn doctor just keeps on prescribing for every damn new thing that goes wrong! And if you refuse to take the drug one more time, the doctor will get all pissed off and tell you that if you don’t want his treatment, then there’s no point to see the doctor!
As an American, I highly value the affordable, accessable health care available in this country, but if you can’t have an intelligent, informed, relationship, even partnership, with your doctor, then you can end up in a damned unhealthy trap of a situation. I feel more like I have access to drug pushers than to health care professionals.
I’m sorry to know what you’ve been through. I guess the main reason is misunderstanding. Even though the doctors here could speak English, it doesn’t mean they can pick up all the information, including me. The worse thing is that most of the doctors have a big ego and the meeting time is strictly limited. Once they didn’t get it, they won’t be able to make it clear and things went wrong thereafter.
Besides, doctors’ behaviors are deeply influenced by the local people. It’s more prominent in the rural area, like where I am. Most of the people here asked to solve their problems as soon as possible. Prescribing drugs means solving their suffering. Also, few can accept to leave without drugs after paying a bill in the hospital. So It’s really time-consuming to pursuade them not to take medicines. In this situation, especially when the doctors are unable to discuss this with you without difficulties and the time is running off, they might decide to prescribe you some drugs to somehow “satisfy” you. They just did it unconsciously or subconsciously. We are conditioned in a way.
But please don’t lose your faith in the doctors here anyway. I still can see the power of change in the medical infrastructure here in Taiwan. We are changing our patients and we are also being reformed and refined. Someday you can meet an ideal doctor, who will be intelligent and considerate enough, and is willing to share his partnership with you.
[quote=“kau826”]The worse thing is that most of the doctors have a big ego and the meeting time is strictly limited. Once they didn’t get it, they won’t be able to make it clear and things went wrong thereafter.
Besides, doctors’ behaviors are deeply influenced by the local people. It’s more prominent in the rural area, like where I am. Most of the people here asked to solve their problems as soon as possible. Prescribing drugs means solving their suffering. Also, few can accept to leave without drugs after paying a bill in the hospital. So It’s really time-consuming to pursuade them not to take medicines. In this situation, especially when the doctors are unable to discuss this with you without difficulties and the time is running off, they might decide to prescribe you some drugs to somehow “satisfy” you. They just did it unconsciously or subconsciously. We are conditioned in a way.[/quote]
Many doctors here are guilty of giving their customers what they want instead of what’s best for them, and because the system allows people to pick and choose their doctors, it isn’t surprising. That said, I’ve had positive experiences with doctors and hospitals here (on my behalf and my son’s). I can’t really compare it with the UK, because I had such little contact with the health system while living there.
[quote=“StevenCrook”][quote=“kau826”]The worse thing is that most of the doctors have a big ego and the meeting time is strictly limited. Once they didn’t get it, they won’t be able to make it clear and things went wrong thereafter.
Besides, doctors’ behaviors are deeply influenced by the local people. It’s more prominent in the rural area, like where I am. Most of the people here asked to solve their problems as soon as possible. Prescribing drugs means solving their suffering. Also, few can accept to leave without drugs after paying a bill in the hospital. So It’s really time-consuming to pursuade them not to take medicines. In this situation, especially when the doctors are unable to discuss this with you without difficulties and the time is running off, they might decide to prescribe you some drugs to somehow “satisfy” you. They just did it unconsciously or subconsciously. We are conditioned in a way.[/quote]
Many doctors here are guilty of giving their customers what they want instead of what’s best for them, and because the system allows people to pick and choose their doctors, it isn’t surprising. That said, I’ve had positive experiences with doctors and hospitals here (on my behalf and my son’s). I can’t really compare it with the UK, because I had such little contact with the health system while living there.[/quote]
Thanks and your words somehow soothe me.
There are weak points in almost every aspect here. I have my own obstacles to overcome when facing a patient of different mother tongue; and I also know that the whole system, the insurance, patients, doctors and the institution, is struggling to keep from bankruptcy. It’s really hard to find a balance among them; ever since the SARS event shattering our society, the authority suddenly recognized the human side of the doctors and started to strengthen the ethical part of our daily practicing. So many hard work and amendment await, yet full of hope and opportunities.
RIght now, every hospital has to go through an inspection by the government periodically to qualify as a teaching hospital or another. In this way, we are forced to look back into ourselves whether we deserved it or not.
