What to Put on Your Profile, and How to Claim It

Most practitioner profiles fail in the same way: they list credentials and omit the things a patient
is actually trying to decide. Fixing that takes half an hour and is the highest-yield work available to
a practitioner who wants to be chosen rather than merely found.

The four questions

A patient arriving at your profile has usually been given your name, or has found you while searching
a problem. Either way they are deciding whether to book. They need four things.

What do you treat? Not only your specialty — the conditions and procedures you
handle most. This is the single most useful thing you can state and the most commonly omitted.

Where do you practise? Clinic name, area, and the emirate. In a country where
insurance networks and travel time both matter, location is a filter applied early.

What qualifies you? Your licence grade and registered field, and your postgraduate
qualifications. UAE licensing involves primary-source verification, so these are checkable claims rather
than assertions — see
what it takes to get licensed as a doctor in the UAE.

How do they reach you? A working number and a booking route. A surprising number of
profiles fail here.

What to include

Sub-specialty focus. Patients search their problem, not your job title. A cardiologist
who states an interest in rhythm disorders is findable by someone worried about palpitations; one listed
only as “cardiologist” is not — see
how to choose a cardiologist in the UAE.

Licence grade and registered field. Stated plainly, matching your licence.
Consistency between what you claim and what the register says matters, and patients do check —
see checking a doctor’s licence number before booking.

Languages. Genuinely useful and almost never recorded. For many patients this
determines who they book — see
what languages UAE doctors speak.

A description in your own words. Two or three paragraphs about how you practise, what
you see most, and how you approach it. This is what distinguishes your page from every other page in
your specialty, and it is what a patient actually reads.

Practical details. Clinic hours, whether you accept direct bookings, which insurance
networks you work with.

What to leave out

Outcome claims and guarantees. These are restricted under UAE healthcare advertising rules and, in a
clinical field, are not defensible in any case — see
DHA advertising rules and patient reviews.

Anything identifying a patient, in any form, without explicit specific consent. This is absolute.

Generic filler that could describe anyone in your specialty. A paragraph about being
“committed to excellence in patient care” occupies space and communicates nothing.

Credentials you do not hold, or titles your licence does not carry. “Consultant” is a
regulated grade, not a description — see
specialist or consultant: UAE medical titles explained.

Claiming a page that already describes you

MyLinks hosts two kinds of page: those created by practitioners who signed up, and sample pages
compiled from information that was already publicly available.

If a sample page describes you, you can claim it free of
charge. Claiming gives you control of the content: you can correct anything inaccurate, add what is
missing, replace the description with your own words, and keep it current as your practice changes.

You can equally ask for the page to be removed, without giving a reason. Claiming creates no
obligation to keep it.

The case for claiming rather than removing is simply that the page exists in search results either
way while it is there, and a page you control is more accurate than one assembled from public sources.
Most sample pages are thin by nature — they carry what could be found, which is rarely what a
practitioner would choose to say about themselves.

Keeping it current

The most common failure is not a bad profile but an abandoned one. Practitioners move clinics, change
emirates, gain qualifications and shift sub-specialty focus, and the profile stays as it was.

An out-of-date clinic address actively costs you patients, since someone who calls a disconnected
number does not try again. If you move between emirates your licence changes too — see
can a Dubai-licensed doctor treat you in Abu Dhabi?.

A reasonable habit is a review every six months, and an immediate update whenever you change clinic,
number, or scope of practice.

To see how practitioners in your field present themselves, browse
the specialty index or your own field, and
personal website or profile page: what actually ranks covers where to put your
effort.

Writing the description

The free-text part of a profile is where practitioners either distinguish themselves or blend into
their specialty, and most blend.

The failure mode is writing about qualities rather than practice. “Dedicated to providing
compassionate, patient-centred care” is true of nearly everyone and therefore conveys nothing. It
also reads as filler, which subtly undermines the credentials sitting above it.

What works is concrete. What conditions do you see most weeks? What procedures do you perform
regularly, and roughly how often? What is your approach to a common decision in your field — when
you recommend intervening and when you recommend waiting? Who is your practice particularly suited to,
and who would you refer elsewhere?

That last question is worth taking seriously. A practitioner willing to say what they do not do reads
as more trustworthy, not less, and it saves both parties an inappropriate appointment.

Write it in your own voice, in the first person, and keep it to a few short paragraphs. A patient
scanning on a phone will read perhaps two hundred words. Make them the two hundred that help them
decide.

Photographs

A clear, recent, professional photograph does more work than practitioners expect. Patients are
deciding whether to trust someone with their body, and a face is part of that judgement whether or not it
should be.

The requirements are modest: a current photograph, well lit, looking at the camera, in professional
context. Avoid heavily stylised images, group photographs where you are not identifiable, and pictures
that are visibly a decade old — the last is a small credibility cost when a patient meets you.

Where a page shows no photograph at all, patients frequently assume the listing is stale.

What claiming actually involves

Practitioners often assume claiming a page is onerous or creates a commitment. It is neither.

The process establishes that you are the person the page describes, after which you control its
content. You can rewrite the description, correct the specialty and grade, update the clinic and contact
details, add languages and sub-specialty focus, and keep it accurate as things change.

You can also have it removed at any point, without giving a reason, whether or not you have claimed
it. Claiming does not lock you in.

The practical argument for claiming is simply accuracy. A sample page carries what was publicly
findable, which is usually incomplete and occasionally wrong. Since the page appears in search results
regardless while it exists, a page you control serves you better than one assembled from fragments
— and it is the page a patient sees at the moment they are deciding whether to act on a
recommendation, as discussed in
how doctors get more patients in Dubai.

A half-hour checklist

If you do nothing else, work through this once.

Search your own name and see what a patient sees. Note every listing that appears. Check each for the
correct clinic, a working phone number, your current specialty and licence grade, and a recent
photograph.

Correct whatever is wrong, starting with the listing that ranks highest, since that is the one most
patients will see. Claim the pages you can claim.

Replace any generic description with two or three paragraphs in your own words covering what you treat
most, how you approach it, and who you would refer elsewhere. Add your sub-specialty focus and your
languages.

Confirm the insurance networks listed against your name are current, since being wrongly listed as
outside a network costs you patients silently.

Then diarise a review in six months, and update immediately whenever you change clinic, number or
scope.

That sequence takes about half an hour and addresses the point at which most practitioners quietly
lose patients — not in competitive search, but in the ten seconds after somebody is handed their
name and looks them up.

That moment is worth more attention than any campaign.

Half an hour, twice a year, is the entire commitment.

It is the cheapest work available to any practitioner, and almost nobody does it.