Preemployment
One of the clinics I work in screens potential employees to be deployed to other countries specifically the Middle East. Occasionally, they refer patients to me for ophthalmologic evaluation if they see something wrong with the patient’s eyes, whether it is blurring of vision uncorrected with eyeglasses, a pterygium, strabismus (either duling/banlag).
The problem with seeing preemployment patients is that they usually consider you just another roadblock in their bid to go abroad to earn more money. It’s not like patient seeing you because they feel that they have a problem and wants you to help them solve it, like the regular patients.
When you recommend that they have to undergo a procedure (which costs additional for them), they are bound to protest, saying that they have to leave because they do not have money…and here you are, preventing them from leaving and making them shell out even more money.
Of course, it also depends on the patient. Patients who seem to be more educated (engineers, architects, for example) and seem have to a bit of savings tucked away somewhere would usually be more keen to have their problems addressed. Patients who go as manual laborers and have little or no savings would usually plead that he be given a go-signal to leave, promising that he would be back to see me after 1 (or 2, depending on his contract) years when he already earned money. So far, I have yet to see anybody do that. The patients I’ve seen again are those whose contracts have expired and are undergoing another preemployment exam in order to leave again.
For doctors, this is good enough gig especially when you’re just starting out since there are really a lot of patients since many do want to leave. However, do not expect the same sort of relationship that you will have with your other patients.
For preemployment atients, I wish you’d take more care of yourself. There’s a reason why you can or cannot be cleared to work. We are not evil. I feel bad everytime I have to say that the patient is not fit to work. The problem is there, it won’t go away until you do something about it. So, better have it fixed, so that not only will you have a better chance to go abroad, you’ll also be a “better person” physically.
“When you recommend that they have to undergo a procedure (which costs additional for them), they are bound to protest, saying that they have to leave because they do not have money”
This is the very reason Doc why I refused a job offer to a pre-employment agency prior to DTTB.
I have a batchmate who used to work in a pre-employment agency. He was made to pay for clearing an OFW who tested positive for hepatitis B abroad (he was negative here). I don’t know what happened to the case but I realized then that pre-employment is really complicated. More than what most MDs realize.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:28 pm————-
Yes, it’s more complicated than most MDs realize AND more complicated than most patients realize. I know the foreign employers can charge the clinic and/or the doctors concerned with repatriation expenses if the patient turns out to be not fit to work. Patients do now really understand how big a risk the doctor is taking to be declaring the patient to be fit for work when he is not. They think it’s just a simple few words on the evaluation sheet but it’s not.
-Joey
It is nice to read about this issue coming from a doctor herself. While I agree that pre-employment medical check up is a must, people these days are really conscious about their expenses.
On the other hand, it is also sad that there are a few medical practitioners might be taking advantages of the situation.
For example, in my company where I work. We are re-hiring some of our previous contractual operators after serving the company for 5 consecutive months.
After going through the medical exam of their 2nd contract, most of them were found to have different sickness that I think they did not get from working with us.
They were asked to take a rest, and come back for another series of expensive lab tests.
The funny thing is when some of them came to another industrial clinic, they passed the exams.
We are not sure but we think that there is something fishy going on.
Just sharing…
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Angel. Though I cannot discount the fact that there are some medical professionals who may be less than pure in their motives, there are also many of us who sincerely want to do our jobs right, both for the patient’s sake and ours (so we don’t get slapped with huge repatriation expenses for clearing a patient who turns out to be sick).
5 months is quite a long time, medically speaking, and you did not mention what sort of illnesses they had and what types of jobs they were in, some illnesses may occur in that amount of time. And, yes, rest does work in a of cases, especially if it is stress related. So, really, I do not know. Maybe they really just needed the rest? Or, there’s really something fishy going on?
In any case, if I were the doctor getting the results with suspicious findings, I would still go with the safer choice and advise whatever needs to be advised rather than push the patient’s luck (and mine).
September 12th, 2008 at 9:07 am