Understanding Your Choices

Living in a foreign country is challenging enough without
having to feel extra vulnerable to medical emergencies because you are
bewildered by the choices and/or rendered mute by the language. Knowing
beforehand where to go can make all the difference in a city that offers such a
wide variety of medical institutions.

Which is best for you, and
why?

If you have a minor medical problem or symptom, and if you
prefer a Western environment and language, Beijing
has a number of private walk-in clinics – Beijing United Family Clinic – Shunyi,
International SOS, Bayley & Jackson, Vista, and International Medical
Center – all of these are
competent.

Regardless of the nature of your medical problem, if you are
comfortable in a Chinese environment, Beijing
has two public hospitals which can accept foreigners: the Sino-Japanese
Friendship Hospital
and Peking Union Medical
College. The latter is
world-class but big, a teaching institution, so it may take a little while to
be seen by the right person.

Ifyou are not certain of the severity of your problem, and
if you feel you need the foreign language capability and level of patient
service you are accustomed to in your home country, there is only one
Western-style, international standard hospital/ER, Beijing United Family
Hospital (BJU).

The reason that BJU (or Shanghai United Family Hospital (SHU)
if you are living in Shanghai)
should be your destination in such a situation is that it has the advanced
radiology – round-the-clock CT and ultrasound – necessary to make emergency
diagnoses, and 24 hour specialty services required to act on most serious
diagnoses, immediately if needed.

BJU’s ER (like SHU’s ER) also has doctors that are American
board certified in Emergency Medicine (one was recently selected by US
President George W. Bush to be his emergency specialist in Beijing this August),
and for patients requiring critical care, BJU has adult intensivists and
neonatologists, backed up by complete up-to-date NICU and ICU equipment. The
Western-style clinics have none of these things.

BJU is also the only institution within 1500 kilometers that
is accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI), the closest being
SHU in Shanghai.
This means that we meet the same patient care and safety standards as hospitals
in the United States
– crucial in any major emergency.

In short, BJU (like SHU) is a real hospital emergency
room/ward, the same as you would find in the Europe or North America or Australia.

Thus you need to ask yourself:

¨
Do
I need a public institution for financial reasons (no insurance)?

¨
How
important is it to me that the institution is intentionally Western and English
speaking?  Will I be comfortable in a
Chinese institution that accepts Westerners?

¨
Am
I reasonably sure that my problem or symptom is minor? (If you are unsure of
this, it is better to go to a real ER)

Whether you choose a clinic or a hospital, a local or
Western facility ultimately depends on you and your family’s needs and
priorities. Unfortunately, emergencies do arise. The best way to be fully
prepared is to decide on your needs/priorities now, so you can use the relative
seriousness of your symptoms to direct you to the appropriate institution.

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BJU’s Emergency Hotline (010 5927-7120)
and SHU’s Emergency Hotline (021 5133 1999) are available 24 hours a day. These
hotlines will directly connect callers to one of our bilingual,
emergency-trained nurses who can help determine the urgency of a situation and
give advice on how to handle the emergency. If an ambulance is needed, we can
help dispatch one to a caller’s location.