Poor Communication Skills and Inadequate Knowledge of Early Medical Officer

Then I took the request form and went to the medical laboratory, they read the request form and took blood specimen, examined it and gave me the result of investigation. After that I returned to that young medical officer to interpret the laboratory result and to prescribe the suitable treatment.

Laboratory technologist wrote that; malaria parasite seen, plasmodium vivax, but the young medical officer surprised me of that I have two types of malaria. After few minutes of silence, I said that how? Upon which base you build this decision? he said that: I am not need chattering, you do not know types of malaria and you do not know where malaria reside, I said to her I know that there are four species of malaria infect human, P.falciparum , P.vivax , P.Ovale and P.malariae and malaria parasite infect our red blood cells and you are requested blood examination to search it in blood not in liver or another site. She said that I will not prescribe drug to you, any patient must select his/her suitable drug according to his behavior, and he said the treatment of vivax malaria is primaquine and I will not write it to you, go to the pharmacy. She made me very sad due to many reasons, absence of respecting their patient’s confidentiality, rude speaking and bad communication to her patients, poor Medical knowledge, and failure to read the laboratory result correctly and refusing to prescribe the treatment.

After that I left that hospital with physical and emotional disorders, we went to a community pharmacy, my brother asked old pharmacist about the treatment of vivax malaria, he said that in aggressive way its primaquine, it is not here search at another pharmacy, my brother asked him to write it, he refused and asked us to look for literate person to write it.

Figure 1:Life cycle of Plasmodium vivax.

Then we go to another community pharmacy, young pharmacist said it’s not there look at another pharmacy, lastly, we find it after we exert an effort Figure1. That rude medical officer led us to incorrect persons whom they are not the treatment protocol of vivax malaria, which required two types of drugs at different period to achieve certain action against certain malaria parasite stage. Lastly, I took Coartem (artesunate + lumefantrine) to remove the blood stages and after that primaquine to the dormant stages in the liver (hypnozoites).

Lastly we conclude that medical students must have sufficient knowledge and adequate communications skills before their release to public hospitals to prevent our community from big problems which may lead to severe complications to the patients , young medical officers and even the whole hospitals, some co-patient may react strongly with those rude and irresponsible young medical officers and they may destroy the hospital instruments and cause dangerous injuries to those doctors as a cost of their rudeness.