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Doctor's care can cure costly fees
By Wang Zhuoqiong and Guo Rui (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-15 07:49
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Dr Wang Zhengyan does a medical check-up for a child at a community hospital in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province. [China Daily] |
For 25 years, Dr Wang Zhengyan has been successfully curing patients, and charging them no more than the price of a bottle of water.
Her decision to charge her patients negligible fees for treatment is in contrast to other medical practitioners in the country, who sometimes charge the sick exorbitant amounts.
"Spend the least and recover fast" is the principle of Wang's practice.
Of the prescriptions she has given in the past two years, the average price is 50 yuan.
"I am a doctor," said Wang, who used to work at a hospital in Hankou district of Wuhan and is now a community doctor. "I am not selling medicine."
"For every disease, there are some medicines that are not necessary to have," Wang said. "It all depends on what a doctor wants to offer."
While many doctors rely on medical tests to make a diagnosis, Wang insists on having a face-to-face examination first to save costs for patients.
When a farmer named Liu Yaodong went to her hospital because he had become exceedingly thin for some unknown reason, he refused to pay for the medical exams that would cost hundreds of yuan.
Wang smiled and took out her stethoscope and checked him from front to back for 10 minutes.
"Did you have snail fever?" she asked.
"Ten years ago," the patient said. "How did you know!"
Liu was cured without going through expensive exams.
When an 84-year-old woman was suffering from a swollen leg, Wang went to her home on a borrowed motorbike.
Wang found it was a skin infection caused by a parasitic fungus and wrote her a prescription for 36 yuan.
Having grown up in a doctor's family, Wang said her parents' empathy and care for people in pain played a big role in her choice of career.
"My childhood was full of crying and painful screaming from the patients," said the doctor, who grew up at a house next to the hospital in Honghu County in Hubei province.
Witnessing a pregnant farmer dying through lack of medical care in the countryside at five years old established in her the idea of saving people in need.
It had been a Sunday morning when she saw a couple walking with difficulty to the hospital for labor.
By the time they reached the hospital, it was too late to save the woman and the child from complications during birth.
The scene of the husband crying over the belly of his late wife has become Wang's motivation when she sees patients.
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In 2009, after nearly 4 million people voted in secret, she was selected "Wuhan Municipal People's choice for doctor" among 647 candidates, and last week she was honored as the "National Medical Health System Advanced Individual" in Beijing.
Despite that, she has a modest monthly income of 2,300 yuan and lives in a 50-sq-m apartment with her husband and 22-year-old son.
Wang's stories have been an inspiration for young medical workers.
"She will sacrifice her lunch break to see one more patient and she tries her best to save patients," said Chang Le, Wang's colleague.
When people ask how she can keep writing low-cost prescriptions, Wang says: "I know the difficulty of people's lives."
"Because I am one of them," said Wang.
