A Family Doctor's Tale - WORD OF MOUTH

WORD OF MOUTH

Word of mouth as spread by your patients is the most important factor in the promotion of a family doctor's reputation and treatment.

In the 1970s there was no such thing as advertising. 
Medical ethics do not allow the doctor to advertise his clinic. There were a few cases where new clinic doctors were found to have breached medical ethics and were fined or suspended for distributing their cards or flyers to people passing their clinics. It was just not the ethical thing to do unlike the present day when clinics were now allowed to announce in the newspapers that they are officially open.


At that time the best way to promote your clinic is to communicate well and treat your patients well and then the patient will spread your ability to their family, friends, colleagues or neighbors. 

To me what was important was the treatment and the attitude of the family doctor to his patients. 
Whether the patient was a CEO of a company or a lowly worker, they were treated equally by me. 
As  I said before, I was a socialist. 
The ability to communicate effectively in English, Chinese and their different dialects and Malay was important to get their complaints and explained to them their illness and how to take their medicines.


I have always believed in health education as part of the treatment of a patient. 
Knowledge of his illness enable the patient to understand his disease and how to prevent getting the disease again or making it worse.
There were many pamphlets which can be obtained at the Health Promotion Board which I was a member on hypertension, diabetes, gout, gastric problem, asthma, high cholesterol, obesity, prostate problem, stroke, cancers (A Simple Guide to Medical Conditions) of different organs etc in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. There were also pamphlets and booklets which are given by various drug companies which help to explain diseases like hypertension, diabetes, gout, skin diseases and at the same time promote their products.
There were also useful posters to display in the clinic. 
To me all these were useful adjuvants to the advice and treatment given by me to the patients. 
I used to distribute the pamphlets with  the appropriate illness and help to explain what is important in the pamphlets

As for my treatment having tweaked various variations to my medicines during my stint at the Run Down Clinic, I was able to treat more effective the colds, coughs and diarrhea (which made up of 90 per cent of the illnesses of the patients) with my combination of medicines. 
There were also separate combination for rheumatism, arthritis, gout, asthma and gastritis. 
However medicines are never fixed and must be individualised for each patient. 
There were patients who were allergic to some medicines and substitutes had to be given.

When patients find their conditions improving as compared to those given by other doctors, they would recommend their families, friends and neighbors to see me.
At that time the cost medicines were low at that time and my rental was low so I could charge the patients very reasonable fees. 
In addition for those who were unable to pay because they were poor they were allowed to owe money.
While doing a review of the increasing number of record cards, I found that I have patients who still owed me money since 1974. 
I have never chased any patient for their money.

It was because of my pleasant caring attitude, my reasonable fees and most of all my effective treatment that I was able to build up my family practice. 

All you need was to cure one patient who has been treated by several doctors for a certain condition without improvement for your reputation to spread all over the country.


Health education was very important in the prevention of the recurrence of a disease and the main topic in my dissertation in my doctorate in health care administration.