Things to be careful while seeking Medical care in China
There are many great medical advances in China for alternative treatment to many illness, lIke Acupuncture, Stem Cells Treatment, herbal and various natural healing methods. But a total hospital care experience is far from ready in China (at least in our experience in GuangZhou in the past 4 months)
If your body requires a combination of western methods of testing (labs) and eastern alternative treatment it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to coordinate a single experience in treatment and after care.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND ANYONE TO GO CHINA HOSPITAL FOR TREATMENT IF YOU REQUIRE SPECIAL EQUIPMENTS OR CARE. In our experience, we have not seen sufficient coordinations and accountability with the doctors and nurses towards a complete treatment experience. For example, a friend whose father needed Platelets was given regular blood transfusion.
I want to share some of these experiences with clinical and nursing care and doctors in the 2 hospitals in Guangzhou at Nan Fang Hospital and Yu Hao Hospitals.
1. Drip! Drip! Drip! It is very common to get intravenous drip for simple prescription even Cold or fever . While we may be used to oral medicine like anti-biotics, tablets or cough tonic or even injection, China doctors prescribe drips (needle into arm, with a bag hanging on a T-stand) for almost any form of treatment of common illnesses. In fact you could see people walking and standing with a drip-stand next to them at some hospital wards. They walk around even to go toilet sometimes. Strange sight in western world, but common in China.
2. No anti-septic swap. Mom just had a Interstitial needle treatment. The nurses did not give her a anti-septic swap because "we ran out of it". She had a small bandage gauze to press against the needle wound. We had to get our own plaster and anti-septic swaps from a private pharmacy.
3. Doctors read the books while treating you. I was told by another patient's son that a specialist doctor opened up a thick medical book before telling him what his father condition is. Sounds theoretical! In Beijing, a 75-yr old doctor was referring to a thick medical journal before prescribing Parkinson's Disease medicine for my Mother-in-law.
4. Left hand DON'T know what the other hand is doing. We noticed that doctors from one department not talking or agreeing with another department. So if you have a complicated case that requires multiple specialist, the total care concept is NON-Existent. In fact, we saw that a hospital would need to re-take our Blood test, ECG test, urine and stool samples as they did not recognize test reports other hospital reports. I don't know whether they don't trust labs reports or they just wanted to make more money from these tests.
5. Anti-biotics. 抗生素. can be bought over the counter at retail pharmacies. These are taken without any prescribed course. Good or bad? Well, it's not good because if you do not complete the course of anti-biotics, your body builds a resistance to it and it becomes ineffective the next time you take the same anti-biotics.