VietNamNet Bridge – One-minute medical examinations and dependence on machinery has caused errors in diagnosis, and patients are the “victims”.

Dependence on machines
Having so many patients, doctors have only one minute for each patient. As a result, instead of focusing on clinical examination, they rely on tests offered by machines to make prescription.

Ly Ngoc Kinh, former head of the Ministry of Health’s Medical Examination and Treatment Management Department, said that according to the Ministry’s regulations, doctors must perform clinical examination firstly to define which kinds of diseases that their patients are committed. Based on clinical examination, doctors will ask patients to make tests or scans in order to confirm their initial diagnosis and to have correct treatment methods.

In fact, this procedure is in the opposite way. Many doctors tell their patients to make tests and scans before giving medical exams. This is wrong and dangerous because medical tests at Vietnamese hospitals are not standardized.

“Machinery is not sensitive as men so it can make mistakes,” Kinh said.

According to Kinh, clinical examination is extremely important in diagnosis. Based on their experience and knowledge, many doctors are able to make accurate diagnosis in a short time.

Doctors who are not very experienced need to perform critical examination very carefully and consult information provided by patients to make accurate diagnosis. But in the current situation, doctors cannot do this.

Errors in diagnosis

Ly Ngoc Kinh said that some doctors based on tests to diagnose their patients of contracting hepatitis C, a costly disease. However, after a time of treatment, when patients are re-examined and tested, they are told to not have hepatitis C.

“Machines are not completely accurate. They are only assistant tools and unable to make diagnosis. Plus with other factors (quality of machines, testing procedures, etc.) the final result always has certain errors,” Kinh added.

“If the testing result is at level 1, it is normal but if it is at level 2, it is abnormal and it means the patients are sick,” he said.

Doctor Phan Xuan Trung from the HCM City Medic Medical Centre shared a real story on ykhoanet website about a man who was diagnosed to contract diabetes. This miserable man sought every way to earn money for treatment. Once he broke the law and was sentenced three years in jail.

Getting out of prison, he did many jobs to earn money to cure diabetes. Struggling to have sufficient money to return to the hospital, doctors said that he did not contract diabetes.

Just because of wrong diagnosis, this man’s life has completely changed.

Some patients visit several hospitals and at each place, they are diagnosed with a different disease.

The health sector and independent research organizations do not have any official statistics on errors in medical diagnosis at hospitals in Vietnam. Yet, doctors said that when public hospitals are seriously overloaded, medical ethics downgrades and doctors abuse of testing, errors are indispensable.

Meanwhile, patients give their lives to doctors so they need doctors’ whole-heartedness and responsibility.

N. Anh