Are MOs very guai lan?
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They always treat you with the assumption that you are trying to malinger?
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But for my side at Sembawang camp very nua & bo hew one...the CMPB quite pro but ca miss out some things also.
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Mixed on this, some are really professional, really respect them, they diagnose you first before make any "comments" while the others are the other way round
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Considering the number of idiots who go up to them on a daily basis, I'm not surprised if they are damn guai lan, coz honestly, I would too.
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r u making a generalisation here?Originally posted by Dorian-X:They always treat you with the assumption that you are trying to malinger?
anyway we jus had one reservist MO join the forum. mabbe he can shed some light onto your perception. -
Guai Lan?! Hahaha......it really depends
I have to admit that some are but a generalization is not fair
Let's put things into perspective. I will refer to recruits and trainees
Firstly have you seen the report sick number in Tekong. You can get up to 700 report sick a day. This is not including other FFI they have to conduct and other administrative work. Having only about 4 MOs max. The work load is overwhelming. If you do your sums right, based on an 8 hour day, each MO has to see about 22 pts. an hour. Not much time is there!!
Secondly to tell you the truth about 40-50% of report sick are really not that ill. Not to say that they are malingerers but well they are not trying hard enough....
Thirdly an MO is a CPT. They are most likely higher rank than most PCs and even some OCs... How many recruits or trainees actually give them as much respect or fear them as much as their PC or OC. This lack of respect towards the MO and lack of discipline within the medical centre can sometimes drive the MO up the wall... Literally.
Remember a MO is still a NSF. He does not enjoy being there as much as most trainees do not enjoy trainning. So when the work piles up they are going to be grumpy. Grumpy people are not usually the most friendly.......unfortunately. Professionalism.......well they are still humans!
This whole problems stems from the lack of interest towards NS. A fact still stands that most people would prefer to be watching a movie in Orchard than crawling in mud with your instructor shouting at you. Commanders must provide the motivation and interest......Rewards must be provided to soldiers who try hard and incentives to those that do not report sick. This way less will report sick, more will bookout early and the MOs will have more time to do their job properly.
Cheers -
will the mo still treat u as chao keng even though u have the x ray n specialist letter to prove you really have problems? no offence
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Dpends on what your medical condition is. Depends on whether or not your specialist has been black-listed.
There is a secret book which they would refer to to see whether your condition qualifies for a downgrade. It is NOT dependant on the whim and fancy of your MO.
In most cases serious medical problems backedup by appropriate investigations and recommendations by a specialist will NOT be ignored
Cheers -
so they will access every downgrading cases on case by case basis or simply follow the secert book?
seriously speaking i think that the rule should be more flexible instead of by book only as everyone have different cases -
thnk about yourself first?s
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Moderators maybe you should transfer parts of this thread into the Question for an MO one. I think the information can be very useful for others.
Coming back to the question, the book is detailed. For conditions not in there, they will be evaluated on a case to case basis
Cheers -
hm.. wich r the ones tt r impt?Originally posted by saabster:Moderators maybe you should transfer parts of this thread into the Question for an MO one. I think the information can be very useful for others.
Coming back to the question, the book is detailed. For conditions not in there, they will be evaluated on a case to case basis
Cheers
or mabbe u help me cut and paste lah. can increase ur post count oso mah.
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Some MO's are very guai lan because they are simply pissed of ppl who come to get status for that day if that day happen to be very xiong.
But sometimes i am really disappointed for their lack of ethics in practicing medicine, after all, MO or no MO they should be professional doctor.
There is currently one MO in tekong that i really think he should not be commissioned (he is OCT at moment).
You can get status slip without even seeing his face.
You complain back pain, you get cough mixture, anti-hestamines.
You have specialist's letter and x-ray recommending you to be excused RMJ, but he simply throw it back at you without reading it and giving you "light duties" 3 days.
Anyway, we have brought it up to CO and he in turn brought it up to Chief MO, matter under investigation now. -
the person shouldnt even be made a doctor in the first place.Originally posted by Ponders:Some MO's are very guai lan because they are simply pissed of ppl who come to get status for that day if that day happen to be very xiong.
But sometimes i am really disappointed for their lack of ethics in practicing medicine, after all, MO or no MO they should be professional doctor.
There is currently one MO in tekong that i really think he should not be commissioned (he is OCT at moment).
You can get status slip without even seeing his face.
You complain back pain, you get cough mixture, anti-hestamines.
You have specialist's letter and x-ray recommending you to be excused RMJ, but he simply throw it back at you without reading it and giving you "light duties" 3 days.
Anyway, we have brought it up to CO and he in turn brought it up to Chief MO, matter under investigation now. -
cmpb doctor oso like that one
i have a friend who went 4 medical review in cmpb with specialist letter n x ray but the mo just browse the letter unwillingly n say, u stay with your pes b n if your situation worsened u go n see mo -
Giving excuse without seeing the patient is not right.
Dismissing a specialist letter without so much as reading it is inexcusable.
The CMO will take appropriate actions
Cheers -
mm, i've seen MOs who have, cancelled medical leave given by the specialist. Not too good........
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For your Info
MO's are not allowed to cancel or reduce any MC's that are issued by a locally registered medical practioner. Specialist & GPs alike. If they are to do that, they must directly contact the issuing Dr. and get them to agree to cancel/reduce it.
This is in the medical directives
Cheers -
i thot u are reffering to me....
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Just wondering, but do MOs really follow the directive? Especially when dealing with clerks, cos he's told me that even though ive got an MC, due to the fact that i am a clerk, i am still able to help out and so he cut my MC. My MC was due to an injury and not something like fever. He also mentioned that if i were in the combat side, i would have gotten it endorsed.
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wat is your mc for? i mean if the mc is for some leg injury and excuses u from running, but in the first place u r a clerk and ur job does not involve running, den o cos u can still do ur job rite?Originally posted by sunniban:Just wondering, but do MOs really follow the directive? Especially when dealing with clerks, cos he's told me that even though ive got an MC, due to the fact that i am a clerk, i am still able to help out and so he cut my MC. My MC was due to an injury and not something like fever. He also mentioned that if i were in the combat side, i would have gotten it endorsed. -
Taken from YPAP forums, posted earlier by a serving NSF SAF MO:
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All SAF NSF MOs that you see have finished 1 year of Housemanship in the government hospitals as well as another year as a Medical Officer in the government hospitals before they go into NS again for the Medical officer cadet course.
So SAF NSF MOs are not totally inexperienced nor are they very experienced.
They are trying their best. But remember that as doctors they never became a doctor to tekan people. They became doctors to help people. However more likely than not it is because of pressure from COs or senior SAF regular doctors that they withold their full compassion.
It is also difficult to practise medicine properly when the soldier answers yes to every question. Sometimes you wonder how come young people can be so sick with so many problems only after they entered the army.
Interestingly, the regular SAF medical Officers who in the end become Major, LTC, COL, BG almost never get much experience seeing soldiers as patients in the SAF. After they pass the SAF MOCC, they get sent to mainly HQ type psoitions to do admin work. See maybe a few patients. So in the end they don't know the ground. They don't know first hand the difficulties of seeing patients in the SAF. It is easy for them to say "seeing soldier in SAF very easy one what, they all chow geng not really sick one" what!" So regular SAF medical officers formulate policies and guidelines without knowing the ground!
In the SAF all regulars do things that will get them promoted. In the SAF medical corps the way to get promoted is to do projects etc. Not see recruits reporting sick. Hence no regular does these tasks. Go ask around. -
Another one from the same thread:
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In plain english.
Doctoring, unveiled.
Doctors reach their diagnosis quite often before they lay a hand on you - or rather, they reach a small handful of diagnoses. They do this by asking you what has happened, and then whittling down the nature of your pain, or your sickness with a lot of other questions.
When they do lay a hand on you to examine you, they are looking for signs which fit with the picture they have interpreted from the words you have given them.
By the time they order tests eg blood tests or X rays most of them already know the diagnosis, or at least 2 possible diagnoses, and the tests either nail the coffin in the lid, or else help to cut from 2 possible diagnoses down to 1 diagnosis.
So as you can imagine, if you present a garbled history to the doctor, the whole process gets messed up
If you get a chao-kenger (It does happen, even in the civilian sector, and I remember idiots blocking up the sick bay back in my recruit days waiting to be seen with a 40 degree fever, who could walk perfectly well until they were within line of sight of an MO whereupon they suddenly and miraculously developed pronounced limps) who won't really say what is wrong with him, then your doctor is forced to adopt a closed line of questioning.
If the patient says yes to everything, eg have you got abdominal pain, chest pain, finger pain, headache, toothache, etc
then the doctor can't hone the rest of the process down. And if by the time he has examined the patient he still doesn't know what is going on -- imagine how many examinations he has to choose from. X ray? Where of? Blood test?? which one? (there are well over a hundred if you count esoteric and rare tests for rare conditions) CT scan? MRI?!?!
Now, if someone does have a weird and wonderfully rare condition, then it is sensible to take a "I dont know what is wrong here, let's refer it on to a more senior doctor who might" approach, and if even the specialist doesn't know what is wrong, then pulling out all the stops and doing hundreds of tests to arrive at a conclusion is sensible.
However, how can you tell the difference between someone who has something really weird going on within him, from someone who looks that way because he has intentionally messed up the process by giving a history of made-up signs in the first place?
And the answer is... you just go by feel.
The service WOULD collapse if all the malingerers were referred on to specialists in NUS because the MOs decided that everyone had to be treated as a genuine case.
And now loop back to the fact that MOs are generally clinically quite young in their careers, being fresh from their housemanship.
Their version of "by feel" may not be quite as accurate as their seniors. And so once in a while something will slip by the net.
(and the truth of the matter is, reading what the docs at sgdrs have been saying... MOs are actually really conservative because they're like all of you - Singaporean. They'd rather play it safe than compromise their careers, and overinvestigate recruits they think are malingering, than underinvestigate)
The answer to the problem here is not, as modeus suggests, a public crucifiction. Or even to make an example of an isolated case, or a single MO. Because that will just be lost in the mists of time.
What you, the public should want is reassurance that this will not happen again - by the implementation at an official level of safeguards and measures to ensure that this is so.
I would suggest :
1) Harsher punishments for the True malingerer. by which I mean the patient who has absolutely nothing wrong with him, who is making up his symptoms. Of course it will be next to impossible to actually pick out someone like this, rather than someone with a weird problem, unless he was caught out when he told his mates how clever he is at cheating the system. This would, in theory at least, deter malingering.
2) Official referral pathways being drawn up, devised by top specialists in those fields. Eg referral pathways for chest pain - must meet certain criteria, tick off a list and if they score X out of Y points then they MUST be referred, or if they display any of the signs listed below, A. B. C. etc
3) Punishments for non medical staff in the SAF who try to goad medical officers into turning away sick patients, or returning them without any MC or meds. The SAF medical corp must be given teeth to bare at the establishment if it is to maintain its professionalism. MOs must be reminded that they are first and foremost doctors, and if they have the ability to raise charges at staff that compromise their abilities as doctors for non-medical reasons, regardless of rank or position, that would help greatly.
4) re-educating SAF staff who feel that an Attend B is a chao-keng. There is a reason the painkillers are prescribed along with the attend B. Which is to help reduce pain. And help the soldier ease back into training. The meds mean something is wrong, but not critically wrong. Hopefully, with the meds, it will become okay again. No soldier should be punished for having something genuinely wrong with him.
Therefore punishments meted out for being attend B - even unofficial ones - should be met with equally harsh punishments. I would love to see an SAF captain or sergeant continue to hand out extra duties or weekends only to have his pay docked to next to nothing. I bet that would stop it in a hurry.
Counterbalancing the threat of too many soldiers chao kenging to get attend B would be the fact that if they were caught chao kenging then they would themselves be punished.
5) re-educating the SAF MOs to have a low threshhold for referral. If they don't know what is going on, consult with someone who does, eg a consultant. If need be, simply be telephone, prior to formal referral.
There is no harm in asking for knowledge, but quite a bit, in medicine, in soldiering on in ignorance.
If a consultant agrees that the patient is probably malingering, then what has effectively happened is a second opinion has been sought.
If a consultant wishes to see a patient who may be ill, then well and fine. -
they just graduated from uni? are they young? moz experienced doctors reached their mid thirties. so if ur MOs are serving ns like u all, den ask u to stop being guai lan. cuz they are neither experience nor good, so u can easily smoke dem. tell dem u chest pain and if they asked u to try move, den u tell dem "chest pain how to move, pain le" den they scared liao. try this.. haha.. or u can threaten them like " i think i'm seriously sick, if u dun believe me, den i go hospital and check up and if i really got problem, den how r u going to bare the responsibilities''Originally posted by Dorian-X:They always treat you with the assumption that you are trying to malinger?
dey sure would have nightmares one. haha -
This cyke from YPAP forums wrote:
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I write with first hand experience as a SAF medical officer.
The way it works is that in SAF training as a MO we are told about pride, how to support the SAF , make it a fighting force etc.
When we get posted to the units , initially we are all gung ho. Try to push the men on etc. Then we get a couple of complain letters from parents through their MPs about how this son and that son cannot tahan and that we are torturing their sons.
The COs can either respond 2 ways. Most unit COs will support the MO and they will basically ask the soldier to sign a form saying that he wants a full inquiry, but if the inquiry yields results that are against him he will be charged. Most soldiers will back down.
The COs of schools eg BMTC have ISO certification standards to meet. I was told once when I was working on Tekong in a meeting with the instructors " Please MO no more complain letters can? We can only afford to have 2 complain letters per cohort otherwise we will fail ISO!" So the COs hate complain letters. They would rather not have them. But you realise that people complain about everything in Singapore. How not to get complain letter if soldiers suffer? So how? In the end give everyone MC lah!
So really it became a cycle. After a complaint letter, you would see recruits going home in the ferry loads. MO trying to be very safe and cautious. Good for recruit , good for parent. Bad for training, looks bad on CO , bad for his promotion. SO MOs get reprimanded again. Told about pride, how we must support SAF to be fighting force etc. So then we see less MC again. More stringent.
Then another complain letter, or a death occurs or something. Then again CO will blame MO. CO will say "I not doctor leh. I never interfere with doctor's decision."
It took me 1 year to realise in the end I better cover my *** and be a safe doctor. The SAF is full of nonsense and lies. In the end I realise after I ORD if I screwed up as a doctor, I can still get sued because after ORD I still doctor. If I screw up as an officer, so what?
I haven't even begun to talk about how they made us doctors see 100 patients in 4 hours!