Recent Dilemma Of HO and Medical Fraternity

 There are so many articles written on the medical fraternity recently especially with regards to House officers. It will never be an ending problem with each catastrophe happening to House officers be it now or in the future.I noticed that, the moment a  catastrophe takes place to House officers there will be floods of knee jerking reactions towards the catastrophe. Generally, pointing towards improvement in quality of HO work and very few pathetic individuals talking on behalf of the  fraternity of doctors who work tirelessly.

It is more disappointing to see  politicians and opportunists jumping the bandwagon to gain a few brownie points for their efforts. Along with some  foreign working doctors joining in to chip in their opinions with shallow understanding of the real situations, attempting to form  authority in the work system of the Ministry of Health.

I would like to stress here, has anyone noticed that in the various categories of working doctors the problem is only among house officers. There are rarely any complaints about Medical Officers or at the Specialists level, although occasionally  we hear about contract Medical officers.

The problems of House Officers are multifactorial.

First of all, in Malaysia everyone can become a doctor like the Air Asia slogan 'Everyone can fly.'We have 31 medical colleges, out of it, we have 11 public medical colleges and 21 private medical colleges.Besides that, we still send students to study in Indonesia, India,UK,Ireland and many more countries. The students can be self funded, government sponsored, organisation sponsored just so to name a few.

Now let me ask the readers!

Do we need so many doctors all of a sudden for a country of a 32 million population?

Perhaps, a decade ago we may have needed them, but now the number of a required sum of doctors has already been reasonably achieved. The Malaysian healthcare system is in need of more specialists and  reduce the intakes of undergraduates and focus on their quality of instead.

Do government and relevant  bodies take a more serious look into this matter?

Sadly, they don’t! They keep recognizing more and more medical colleges both locally and from overseas being worried about the repercussions of the public outcry or losing  public support.

Morever, they never  built enough healthcare  centres to absorb increasing patients to provide more conducive facilities. Most of the government hospitals have cramped wards with so many disciplines sharing beds. Any new government building will never finish in time and their shoddy work often leads to further delay.

So what do they do instead is to pressure the medical Fraternity senior doctors!

If  care of patients is compromised the senior doctors are answerable or if House officers fall into depression the senior doctors are held responsible and condemned.

Isn't this an act of bullying by the public and the government towards these group of hardworking and dedicated doctors.

Also, the problem lies in inadequate assessment by the medical colleges prior to accepting the students. The overall interest of the student in this field is not properly assessed. Each college has its own foundation of exams for the  intake and the number of students getting into the college therefore there is severe lack of standardized assessment.To add to the burden of government medical service, no private medical college in this country  has their own hospitals. As such, the private and some public medical colleges depend on government medical facilities to assist them.

Does anyone talk about it? Certainly not. Most would react when the situation is hot and then will sweep it under the carpet till another round of similar problems arises.

Coming to overseas doctors who claim that the other side is greener. Let me highlight to them that in most countries there are very few medical colleges with sufficient house officers passing out to serve the health service.As such the quality of house officers and the facilities will be conducive.Developed countries absorb the best brains from other countries as medical officers and specialists. It is not like an open market in Malaysia where anyone can join medical colleges .

In the process many of them with real interest joins medical college, few join because their parents want them to be doctors, and few join because they have attained good results.  Some join out of no interests but situations have caused  them to be in medical college.

So tell me with this varied type of students joining medical colleges, how will their response be to a  highly tensed working environment that deals with life and death.

Is this the job of senior doctors to monitor such occurrences or is this a good structure system developed by the government.

Finally, I am really puzzled with regards to house officers, as there is so much hoohah! But the moment they  become MOs or Specialists, there are no more complaints.

Why is it so? My deduction is that there are very few HO who actually have interests in the work of medicine.As such they can't cope up with the nature of work as a doctor.

If one complaints of work hours or nature of being a House officer, it has reasonably improved with years from on calls to shift systems and each shift not one House officers ,there are few posted together with each department having around 20 to some 40 House officers to work in the department.

Besides, once they become Medical officers ,there are no complaints of a tough working environment.Why is it so?It boils down to the fact that, most House officers who become Medical Officers are the passionate ones. They enjoy the work and career progress in servicing the sick and ill.

Let me conclude by saying I am not saying there is no bullying in the system.It has very much reduced with  increased Medical officers and specialists to monitor House officers. Look at the problems in a holistic manner before reacting and pointing fingers. The concerned parties and relevant government bodies should be sincere in addressing the issue .Instead, the senior doctors are used as a punching bag for the flaw in the system which demoralizes everyone in the medical Fraternity, alas we too are humans with feelings.