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Dear Editor,

I have been living and working in HCMC for one year; before that, in the US for 30 years. I am currently a doctor in a private hospital. When I first started working here, I often heard from local colleagues that Vietnamese patients were “different,” often uneducated and incapable of understanding medical matters; therefore it was a waste of the doctor’s time to explain or fully inform them.

This justifies the authoritarian approach many doctors here take toward their patients: “Just do this because I said so.” Many people come to me with no idea of what their previous diagnoses were, what medication they were taking, or how to take it properly. Unfortunately, when patients don’t understand what they have and what the treatment is for, they often don’t follow through with the treatment plan, making it less effective even when it is correct.

I don’t find Vietnamese patients (at my private hospital or at the charity clinics I help out at) any different from my patients in the US. There are always reasons why some patients do not follow doctor’s instructions for treatment or follow-up, such as poverty, difficult access to care (overcrowding), conflict with work, lack of information, or psychological denial of the problem, but these are the same reasons as anywhere else in the world.

Having a lack of information is not the same as being unintelligent. I find that Vietnamese people in general are among the most literate and intelligent in the world, eager to learn and be proactive. If patients do not understand their medical condition and how it is being treated, it is the doctor’s responsibility to explain it in ways they can understand (i.e. not in medical terminology). This is an important part of the treatment.

Of course, there are many difficulties and barriers for doctors here in doing their jobs (too many patients, too little time!), but I don’t agree that we have to contend with low intelligence in our patients.

Namtran Pham, MD
Ho Chi Minh City