At day, Dr Adunchai Sangsert changes women's lives by giving them higher noses, larger eyes and bigger breasts. But at night, after getting home and tucking his sons into bed, he switches on his computer and begins to provide answers, for free, to online questions sent to him. Queries range from a distressed mother seeking the correct way to breastfeed her newborn, to a disoriented elder who has just found out he has cancer.
Dr Adunchai is the founder of SOS Specialist (www.sosspecialist.com), a recently launched website providing information on any medical question sent to a group of doctors specialising in branches including orthopaedics, ophthalmology, radiology, family medicine, nutrition, physical therapy, dentistry, otorhinolaryngology, nuclear medicine, psychiatry, dermatology, surgery, laboratory medicine, paediatrics, traditional Chinese medicine and internal medicine.
Once users visit the website, they choose a virtual clinic based on their concern. After agreeing with the terms of use, stating that the doctors' answers are mere recommendations, not diagnoses, they will be automatically linked to Facebook pages where they can drop their questions in the message boxes and expect answers within 24 hours.
Dr Adunchai, who also has written two award-winning blogs about the benefits and harms of plastic surgery, each boasting several million views, dreamed up the idea of creating a platform where people could get in touch with doctors online for free after being inspired by the benefits of the Line messaging app last year. In the chat group where all of his classmates from the Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, who were then doctors of all specialities practising medicine across the country, used to keep in touch, it was also the place where they consulted each other for medical opinions.
He thought that such a convenient way of consultation could be developed into something the public could benefit from in an era when inaccurate medical information runs rampant on the internet. Moreover, he thought he would also get to make the most of the years he spent in medical school.
"I regretted all the knowledge I had learned [but wasn't using]," Dr Adunchai said. "After I became a plastic surgeon, my field became narrower. While I'm very good at nose jobs and all that, other things that I studied for 12 years have not been used. I regretted that. So I thought if I could make use of it, it would be something good for the people."
However, creating a website of such a scale proved to be an uphill struggle for Dr Adunchai as it required a number of public-spirited doctors working together to make it happen. Not all of the doctors from the chat group agreed that it was such a good idea, with some fearing that something like this would end in complications and lawsuits. Only a few, out of the hundred, were inquisitive enough to join the ride.
So, Dr Adunchai decided to invite doctors on pantip.com, a popular Thai online discussion board where a number of doctors are active. It turned out that some of the doctors he came across were cynical about his intent. "If you ask me, I think they wanted the relationship between doctors and patients to stay apart because they thought that the closer relationship could become problematic," Dr Adunchai said.
"But for me, I happened to think that all the lawsuits we saw between doctors and patients came from the fact that they didn't talk enough. I wanted other doctors to see that if doctors and patients are brought closer, this kind of problem could be fixed. In ancient times, a doctor treating a patient was like a father treating a son. But as society got bigger, that kind of relationship grew apart. I thought that social media could strengthen the relationship again."
Regardless of the handful of the doctors who signed up, Dr Adunchai set up the website and launched it in March. Since then, the website has gradually been gaining popularity and scores of generous doctors, inspired in the knowledge there have been no repercussions, have been jumping on the bandwagon.
About 20 questions are received everyday, Dr Adunchai said that the kinds of questions they usually receive come from patients who are too inhibited to ask the questions in real life. As such, he believes that this is another advantage that comes with the service.
"A patient may be quiet when meeting a doctor in his practice," Dr Adunchai said. "Whatever the doctor says or asks the patient is likely to say 'yes' and leave without asking anything. But the same person, when asking the doctor on our website will start to argue 'not this, not that, doc!'" While Dr Adunchai is determined to keep the website going, the website has also encountered a relentless number of internet trolls and said that it is quite common for doctors to find themselves exhausted by the end of the day.
Dr Adunchai said, therefore, that he would be more than willing to hand it over to a related government organisation, if any of them were interested in expanding it.
But for now, the surgeon is happy to sit in front of the computer until 1am most nights, endeavouring to answer ever question he receives.
"Because I don't know how urgent their questions are," Dr Adunchai. "I'm afraid that they would be waiting for my answers. So I try to answer all the questions within 24 hours. That's why I always stay up late every night. If I didn't answer them, the website would be just be like a question on a message board that nobody pays attention to."
