Complaint against a clinic

R writes in:

how can make a complaint on clinics where doctors are not in clinic during business hours
but left to nurses to subcribe medicine to patiens?

Dear R,

Thanks for writing in.

First of all, a few corrections are in order. It’s a common mistake to use the phrase “subscribe medicine” when I think you mean “prescribe medicine”. Clinic assistants (who usually are not nurses in the RN sense) are not allowed to prescribe medicine – that is a doctor’s job – but they can be trained to dispense medicine prescribed by a doctor. Some clinics do allow regular patients to pick up repeat prescriptions for medication that they are already on but that is another matter. It is possible a few clinic assistants might be cheating the doctor by doing such things without his or her knowledge (from the doctors’ forum it has been known to happen) but this is not the norm. You go to a clinic not to buy medicine but to see a doctor for a medical consultation as the primary reason.
We cannot say why the doctor was not present in the clinic – and they should be – but sometimes they may have stepped out to attend to matters or even a lunch break and may have returned late. In any case the clinic assistant should contact the doctor by phone.
If anyone has a complaint against a doctor, the proper channel is the Malaysian Medical Council and you can get more information here

HTH

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Malaysian physician, haematologist, blogger, web and tech enthusiast