The five documents to ask for before you leave the clinic
Almost everything a clinic hands you at discharge is written for you. The documents your doctor at home will need are different, and they are far harder to obtain once you have flown.
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Most of what a clinic gives you at discharge is written for you to read. Almost none of it is written for the doctor who will see you at home. Those are different documents, and only one of them is difficult to obtain after you have left the country.
Ask while you are still in the building
A Korean clinic can produce a medical record on request, and the request is ordinary. What makes it hard is distance: once you are home, you are asking a clinic in another time zone, in another language, to identify you from an email. Everything below is easier to get on the day.
The five documents
1. The operation or procedure record. What was done, on which side, with what. For surgery this is the document a second opinion is impossible without.
2. Product identifiers. Implant makes and serial numbers; the brand, lot number and quantity of any injectable; the make of any thread. If a device is ever recalled, this is how you find out whether it concerns you.
3. The medication list, in generic names. Korean brand names will not be recognised by a pharmacist at home. Generic names travel; trade names do not.
4. Imaging, as files. Ask for the actual files rather than a viewer or a printed sheet. A CT or an X-ray your home hospital can open is worth more than the same image printed.
5. The pre-operative photographs. Clinics photograph you before treatment as a matter of routine. Those images are part of your record, and without them any later conversation about what changed is two people remembering.
A note on language
Records are written in Korean. An English summary is helpful and it is not the record; ask for both, because a translated summary is the clinic’s account of the document, while the document is the document.
Consent is separate
Being given your record is not the same as agreeing that your photographs may be published. Those are two different permissions, and a clinic asking for the second should ask for it in writing and separately. You may decline it and still be treated.
This article is information, not medical advice, and reading it does not create a doctor-patient relationship. The Seoul Glow is a registered facilitator: we coordinate care, we do not practise medicine and we do not decide what treatment is right for you. No outcome can be guaranteed by anyone. Discuss any procedure with a licensed physician who has examined you.
