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The vast majority of patients are usually completely satisfied with their medical care and are grateful to their doctor. However, in some cases, problems can occur, and you need to know what steps you can take if you are unhappy or dissatisfied with the outcome of your treatment.

In the first instance, you should try to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. Talk to the doctor or the hospital administration to try and settle matters at the earliest, especially with regard to minor complaints ( such as rude staff, telephone calls not being returned or unpalatable hospital food). Most complaints originate due to seemingly trivial problems.

If however, if you have a serious complaint about your medical care, and if you are convinced that your doctor has been negligent, you can take appropriate action. However, do remember that just because the outcome has not been satisfactory ( for example, a patient dies during surgery) , it does not necessarily mean that the doctor has been negligent or irresponsible! There are many reasons why patients do not do as well as expected; after all, medicine is an inexact science which deals with many biological variables that are beyond anyone's control. Consequently, in spite of the best care, a patient may die or his condition may become worse.

There are many avenues open to you to get redressal, and you may choose any or all of them. For instance, you can make a complaint to the local professional medical body, usually the state medical council. The appropriate medical council can punish the doctor: for example, by removing his name from the medical register, if he has been found guilty of serious professional misconduct, either permanently, or for a specified period, so that he can no longer practice medicine.

Before taking legal action, you should carefully consider all the implications and repercussions. The process can be a very long and expensive one. You must also ascertain precisely what you want to achieve by initiating litigation. Do you merely want an apology from the doctor? Are you angry with the doctor because you feel he was careless and you want to seek revenge? Do you want to expose the doctor's incompetence to the public to protect other patients? Do you want monetary compensation? While all or any of these objectives may provide sufficient reason to go to court, do remember that medical malpractice lawsuits are powerful double-edged weapons which should be used only as a last resort. Not only can such lawsuits damage a good doctor's reputation, they can also create a lot of tension between patients and doctors in general. Let me point out, in this context, that unnecessary and excessive medical litigation has led to the regrettable situation in which American medicine finds itself today, in which both doctors and patients have become losers.

As a boutique IVF clinic which provides highly personalized care to infertile couples in a comfortable setting, we take great pride in our customer service. We pamper our patients and do our best to keep them happy. While the outcome of any IVF cycle is always uncertain, we do our best to make sure the process is as stress-free as possible. We do this by listening carefully to our patients and involving them actively in their treatment by educating them and sharing information with them.

However, there will always be some patients who are unhappy with us and who have complaints about us. I guess this is inevitable when we do over 400 IVF cycles every year. Not all IVF cycles are going to be successful – and patients who have failed IVF cycles are often likely to be unhappy and discontented.

The IVF doctor is often a soft target for complaints by unhappy patients and this is something every doctor needs to come to terms with.

Now, many doctors simply don’t care. They brush off patient’s complaints or ignore them. They allow their juniors to deal with angry or unhappy patients – and many will refuse to even acknowledge the patient’s angst and unhappiness. They feel if a patient is unhappy with them, the patient should go somewhere else , their approach being – Good riddance to bad rubbish ! After all, there are lots of other patients out there, aren’t they ?

Because we are a boutique clinic, we treat each complaint with respect. I feel that every complaint is a gift – and do our best to learn from it, so we can prevent problems from recurring. Now I know it’s not possible to keep all patients happy all the time – but we do try to do our best.


We make it a point to listen respectfully to all our patients – and if they have a problem, I encourage them to talk to me, so I can help fix the problem ! This is why it hurts so much when patients make false allegations and complaints about us on websites. Thanks to online bulletin boards and online doctor grading sites , it’s now very easy for any disgruntled patient to make any allegation about any doctor - even if there is not an iota of truth in this ! A doctor is a soft target and it’s easy for a patient to harm a lifetime’s professional reputation by a false complaint . Unfortunately, not all websites bother to check the authenticity or reliability of these complaints , which means that even if I have 999 happy patients, 1 unhappy patient can spoil my digital reputation.

Ideally, webmasters should realise how fragile a doctor’s reputation is and how much it means to him. Complaints against a doctor should first be emailed to the doctor, who should be given a chance to provide an rebuttal. This is a basic principle of natural justice ! Only when this is done, should the complaint be published, if it still deserves to see the light of day. If not, then unethical doctors can post ( or get their cronies to post) false complaints about other clinics who are in competition with them – and this can set off a slinging match which harms everyone.

Allowing the online publication of unmoderated complaints about doctors without giving a doctor a chance to protect himself is a low blow against doctors and will strike another nail in the fragile doctor-patient relationship. Doctors will start seeing all patients as possible complainers – leading to an unhappy and adversarial relationship, and hurting both doctors and patients !
Patients need to provide feedback about their doctors – both good and bad ! However, this should be done in a healthy fashion, so that everyone benefits from this feedback !