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Related articles about health issues : Hospitals in Bangkok | Dental Services | Eye Clinics | Pharmacies | Shortcomings of Thai Healthcare (this page)
This report comprises 4 pages. Hopefully you can benefit by scanning them all.
Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 (this page)- Page 4
5) Language Issues
While some of the well known hospitals clearly have a policy of catering to foreigners, and Thailand is actually promoting itself as a place to go for reasonably priced medical treatment, this remains an important issue. Personally, we do not have a problem, since we can manage the Thai language relatively well. However, we observed recently what happened to a good friend of ours, who needed prolonged in-hospital treatment. When you have to communicate properly, because you are physically handicapped, and need to be moved around in a certain way, it is very difficult to have things done properly, because most of the nursing staff has only basic English command. Even communicating with doctors can be difficult, also because they are 'busy', and do not really take a lot of time to have a little chat with their patients. If you go to hospital for a service that does not require a lot of explanation, it does not matter maybe that much, but if you need medical support during a prolonged stay, being unable to express yourself in Thai language, clearly is not optimal.
6) Pitfalls of being assertive :
We observed that there are some pitfalls in being assertive and expressing your opinions and disagreements with nursing staff and doctors at Thai hospitals. Possibly because you are a foreigner (maybe Thai doctors do not behave the same way with Thai patients), the staff intends to take your objections and opinions too much into account. That is, if you do not want a certain medicine for whatever reason, well, they will not give it to you. You can almost bargain the whole time how you want to be treated. Having some medical background ourselves, we kind of observed that this attitude is not always beneficial to the patient. What it all means is, that the staff at Thai hospitals just gives in to your wishes, just because you are a foreigner, and they apparently want to please you this way. Medically speaking, this is not always optimal.
7) Tendency to have limited nursing staff and reliance on family assistance for patients?
At least in one hospital (Bumrungrad) we noticed (a friend of us was staying there for a long time) that nursing staff at night can be rather limited. This is somewhat strange, possibly related to a lack of available trained nurses in Thailand (we do not really know), since salary overheads can not really be a problem, we assume.
What is very common for Thai patients, and also apparently for Middle Eastern patients, is to have one or more family members stay overnight to help out. This reliance on family members is not common at all in European hospitals, and some patients will simply not have someone to provide the service [surely there are quite a few foreigners living in Thailand without close relatives]. If necessary, a service is available to hire a nurse for the night (at a high fee) and the hospital can arrange for that. It is a bit bizarre, since adequate nursing care at night should in our opinion be provided by the hospital staff itself.
What to do when you need medical help or supervision at home? Probably, if you do not have family or a (very good) friend to take care of you, you will have to spend your hard earned savings.
When asking around at a major hospital, we were reluctantly pointed towards a company that provides qualified nurses for daytime or nighttime care. So, importantly, it looks like a major hospital can NOT arrange for this type of medical service. We contacted a company called Dr. Health Co. Ltd. They provided night time care for our friend at the astonishing rate of 2,400 baht per night (+VAT). Nurses (when we asked them) are paid between 900 and 1,500 per night. Unfortunately, this company did not provide reliable services : they did annoyingly change the nurses at short notice, and even did not provide nurses on certain days.
You have to shop around a bit, we think, trying to get nurses to help you out. It looks like home care however (if provided by a qualified nurse) is expensive to get. Qualified nurses ask for anything between 1,200 and 1,800 baht. Ethics may not be optimal. One nurse started borrowing money from our friend, and actually asked for a lot of money, notwithstanding the high salary she received.
Next page : Is there a lack of qualified nurses? - Medical reports. What about your personal health data?
Shortcomings in the Thai health care system : Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 (this page)- Page 4
Related articles about health issues : Hospitals in Bangkok | Dental Services | Eye Clinics | Pharmacies | Shortcomings of Thai Healthcare (this page)
More : Health Statistics | Cost of Medical Treatment in Thailand | Medical Tourism in Thailand
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