Seeing a doctor at a university hospital
1 2 3 4 5
Get queue
number Assigned
doctor and room Sit at the
waiting area
across the
consultation room Consult
doctor Collect
medicine
PHARMACY
15-30
min
15-30
min
1-3
hours
15-30
min
15-30
min
TOTAL 2-5 HOURS
Having access to this type of data would certainly
come in handy when your patients have a medical
emergency. Attending doctors would then no longer
be wasting time asking patients to scratch their brains
to recall the colourful medicine’s name and its dosage.
In today’s practice, most of our patient time is
spent in in history taking: past medical and surgical
history, family history, medication, etc. The same
question is repeatedly asked every time the patient
visits different hospitals or clinics. On average, a
doctor spends 15-25 minutes of consultation time in
a primary care centre, and almost half of that time is
spent on history taking!
This precious time spent with each patient could
be much better used on the history of presenting
illness (HOPI) and proper examination if patients were
able to share their previous medical records and a list
of medications in a well-organised manner.
Further, doctors in a primary care centre could
spend more time with their patients on the first visit
to identify psychosocial problems, explore presenting
complaints more accurately, prescribe less, and offer
more preventative advice. In short, the total waiting
time from the registration counter to the consultation
with a doctor could be reduced remarkably!
Today, there are secure online websites and
smartphone apps that can assist patients in keeping
their records in their smartphones. But none of this is
possible without support from doctors.
Each of us, as doctors, must therefore create
awareness among patients about the importance
of patient health records. Attending doctors should
GlobalHealthAndTravel.com
assist their patients in updating their health records
regardless of whether the patient visits different
hospitals or clinics.
This will ensure that the patient’s information
can be shared quickly and easily among various
touchpoints, hospitals or clinics. Up-to-date PMRs
can help clinicians identify and stratify chronically
ill patients, which in turn will improve quality of
care by using the data and analytics to prevent
hospitalisations among high-risk patients. n
Dr Rashid Khan Bin Shahul Hameed is an emergency
medical officer at Cardio Vascular Sentral Kuala
Lumpur (CVSKL).
MAY 2020
73