Japanese doctors

[MrBing 0]

Hi there

 

Do you all have a fixed doctor you go to?

 

I had a bad cold last week and went to the doctor and came out with 4 different powders and pills to take every day. He said it wasn't serious, just a bad cold and sore throat, but it seemed very excessive and I was just wondering if this was the norm and if anyone else had a similar experience.

 

Not sure whether to trust the guy or not

[Ocean11 0]

4? That sounds excessive. Don't trust him. I'm half dead at the moment with something similar, and I've got 3 types with instructions to drop 1 at the first sign of improvement.

 

If they don't actually tell you clearly what they're giving you, ask, and also ask if you really need it. What they say then can usually be recognized as trustworthy or not.

 

I've encountered really good doctors here and really lousy, creepy ones.

[miteyak 0]

In tradition with the 'get you back to work' approach to medicine, you probably got so or all of ;

 

an anti-inflammatory

a stimulant (to counter the sleep inducing anti-inf.)

vitamins

decongestant

painkillers

a throat spray/candy

something to stop all of the above upsetting your stomach

 

(did you get an IV when you went in?)

 

All you need to look and play the part of a stiff in a suit not using his yuukyukyukas... (they're for show only)

 

It's not just the Japanese, the french do the same, quite the wholistic approach

[Ocean11 0]

You missed the key ingredient to a cold cure. Where's the antibiotic in your list?

[amandanism 0]

singapore is especially bad. they give out anti biotics like its candy.

[miteyak 0]

antibiotics for a cold... I don't think i've been to a doc that bad yet...

[badmigraine 0]

I had a doc in Tamachi who was telepathic...he must have been, because he knew what was wrong with me without even performing any tests.

 

I entered the curtained-off examination room and the nurse motioned me to sit on the table. I was leery of touching the dirty styrofoam pillow.

 

"What can I do for you?"

 

"Well, about a week ago, I began to get extremely tired around 7 pm...not sleepy at all, just suddenly exhausted...happens every day at about the same time...never had this kind of feeling before..."

 

"Hm. You've got a cold. Here, take this prescription to the pharmacy...NEXT PLEASE!"

 

The doc leaned over to give me the paper, and his labcoat pocket fell open to reveal a fresh pack of Caster Milds and a lighter.

 

Dang was he good!

[scouser 4]

 

I don't like doctors even back in the UK, so when I can't understand them too....

[Weegeoff 0]

O.11 A cold is a virus.They only give antibiotics to bacterial infections

[badmigraine 0]

Yeah but that's the problem...a lot of them give antibiotics ANYWAY.

[Fattwins 0]

I to have been to the small hospitals here. Once I was told that an infection was stress.

 

one thing you have to remember... in japan the doctors sell the drugs directly. so what they sell they also profit on.

 

my friend works as a drug rep he is always pampering the docs

 

Find a good hospital and stick to it.

 

A good hospital in kyoto is takeda hospital located near kyoto station. the doctors in most cases speak english and they will run the full tests that you might need.

[Ocean11 0]

Weegeoff, your irony detector seems to be misfunctioning.

 

 

Don't you just love the privacy afforded in doctor's clinics? Where the deaf old bat in reception wants you to describe your symptoms in front of everyone in the waiting room who are only pretending to read 'Josei Jishin' magazine.

 

"Well first off, I am diarrhea. And (whispering) one of my er, you know, is grotesquely swollen."

"Ehh? Ehh?"

"(Louder) My er,.."

 

Instead of the old bat asking you and telling the illustrious doctor, why not eliminate the Chinese whispers aspect and you tell the old goat yourself?

 

I once went to see some repulsive Mesozoic toad of a doctor for a heat rash on my chest, and he kept looking at my shoulders with a huge magnifying glass and croaking something about me having had too much sun when I was younger. He then made his diagnosis of my chest, in a croaking shout to his pharmacist and the whole waiting room, without actually having waved his magnifying glass over my chest. I walked out. I could hear him rasping "Eh? Oi! Doushite?!" behind me.

[miteyak 0]

The problem with hospitals is the waiting. The clinics I go to take about 30 mins out of my day, the hospitals, several hours. Several hours = rather a lot of money...

[Karnidge 2]

There are so many problems with the system. The 5 medicines for a cold thing is a joke and it really puts me off it all.

[nekobi 0]

anyone get blood drawn at the docs here? i've had it done a few times and they never want to wear gloves. i always have to stop them right before and ask for em. it kinda freaks me out. and they do some other things waaaaay different than in the us.

[Siem Reeves 0]

so, the doctors here do seem to dish out the antibiotics like lollies, but what's the story with taking them. back home, i was always told i must finish the course of pills, even if i felt better (so the drugs would properly do their job), but here my doctor says, "oh, if you feel better, stop taking the antibiotics".

 

i felt better but finished them anyways!!

[Ocean11 0]

Yeah, we have arguments about that at home. The idea is that you have to make sure that the antibiotics actually kill the bugs, rather than just providing the bugs with an opportunity to find out about antibiotics and develop defenses. That's the way I understood it.

 

The haste with which antibiotics are swallowed in the first place and then the haste with which they're abandoned really makes me angry (especially considering the nearly 50% relapse rate which I see.) I think it would be safer on the whole to wear a leather bag around one's neck containing a frog's foot, some liverwort, and a couple of pages from the Book of Job. (Unfortunately the effectiveness of this kind of comment gets lost in translation).

[fukdane 2]

I'm sure it does.

 

But do many Japanese question this at all?

 

Perhaps we "just can't understand".

[Siem Reeves 0]

i'm afraid that is the case - we can't understand ... alarming though it is when you are told that the old people are lying on the warm footpath near where the super hot water is spewing forth from the ground because it "cures cancer". i'm not knocking it, just baffled at the reasoning...

[8bob8 0]

I recommend herbs, massage and generally avoiding doctors as the best policy.

[sachiko 0]

Is it problem that the doctor give medicine for illness? I don't understnad.

[jared 0]

We're just a little baffled as to why we get 23 different medicines for quite simple things when at home we only need 1 or 2 at most.

[Karnidge 2]

And also that the doctors sometimes don't really seem to know what they're doing. We are a different species after all.

[slow 0]

I know the Japanese doctors in general practice are very fishy. But the surgeon of my father was a very nice and reliable guy. I learned many things from my dad's surgery.

Anyway, I have a question. Have you ever heard patients give money to their surgery?

I think it is pretty common in Japan.

We wanted to express our gratitude and I asked my nurse friend what we should do.

She said giving money to surgeon isn't neccesary and it is a kind of bribe.

If he is a common-sense surgeon, he won't accept your money.

So we didn't give any money to him, but if we didn't have decent advice, I'm sure we would give money to him as others doing.

This is one thing you can say Japanese medical system is so bad.

[indosnm 0]

I think part of the problem is that its all kept within the families.

The doctors "dingbat" son that would have had no chance at passing medical school without his father paying for him is a big factor I think.

No privacy & specialists that run between 6 patients at a time is also funny too. At home a specialist would be lucky to see 10 patients in a day, where as the J doc see's about 10-15 an hour!