YOURSAY | Bullying and abuse: Shining a light on house officers plight

YOURSAY | ‘This is a long overdue problem swept under carpet…’

Penang exco says junior doctors subjected to 'inhumane' conditions

Observer10: Yes, house officers have to work from 5am to 10pm even though their actual working hours starts at 7am.

Almost every day, they are scolded by the specialists, medical officers and nurses. Their basic salary is less than RM3,000.

The house officers dare not voice out because they are scared they cannot become doctors if they do so. My niece was a house officer but quit soon after.

FellowMalaysian: @Observer10, I am very sorry to hear this bullying of your niece in the government hospital.

It’s very sad and shocking indeed to see the Health Ministry turning a blind eye over such abusive use of position and power by the medical officers, specialists and nurses against these poor house officers.

It’s a shame that even medical doctors are now behaving like monsters and looking for victims to ease their workload.

The Health Ministry and its director-general have a very serious problem at hand but this long overdue problem is being swept under the carpet.

Tok Guru: @FellowMalaysian, there’s always another side to the coin. Do you know that there is an oversupply of local medical universities which are churning out doctors like degree mills?

A doctor’s job is to provide the best care to a patient but with these degree mills, we have an oversupply of poorly trained doctors.

They cannot comprehend basic care which makes them dangerous doctors. We cannot coddle them and let them mishandle patients in the process. We are talking about people’s lives here.

The solution is to close down and reassess these degree mills that are producing half-baked doctors.

GreenSalmon6877: The problem is the gross abuse of power of other professions towards the house officers. The house officers have to do the nurses and the ‘pembantu perawatan kesihatan’ (PPK)'s job instead of receiving proper training.

I've seen a house officer emptying a filled-to-the-brim urine bag instead of doing his rounds because the PPK refused to do so.

The matrons will protect their nurses and PPKs no matter who is in the wrong, while all specialists, no matter which race, would not protect the house officers because they come and go every four months.

This is to respond to previous comments about racism, which, to be honest, is not happening from what I’ve seen.

Anon25: What are house officers required to do that you call overwork? They do not diagnose, they don’t independently prescribe medications, don’t perform operations, they don’t independently order investigations or attend to emergencies.

So, what is this overwork these so-called overworked house officers are complaining about? I will tell you.

House officers spend most of their time recording the major complaints of patients, their medical histories and their allergies.

They are also encouraged to examine these patients and make a tentative diagnosis. This is called "clerking a case". It is part of their training.

After the medical officer or their boss sees the patient, they will be asked to write down the medications needed, the tests to be ordered, and consultants to be contacted when necessary.

They are also required to draw blood for lab diagnosis. They have to do all these mostly clerical work to become doctors.

The trouble is, most of the complaining house officers are just poorly trained graduates from questionable medical schools. They sweat and toil over these simple tasks because they may never have been trained to do so.

The good ones from good schools do not complain. Because they want to learn.

Onceforall5214: @Anon25, it’s not really the workload that matters to them but how they are being socially treated that traumatised them.

There are cases where they have been indiscriminately scolded and mentally tortured just for petty mistakes.

What they need is a more humane and professional way of training novice doctors. Though some can accept such treatment, generally a sadistic approach is unacceptable.

BrownCheetah9736: This has been an ongoing issue and an extension of the contract doctor issue.

We have too many doctors and too many private medical schools out to make a profit without considering the quality of the graduates.

If you can’t afford local schools, or can’t even qualify, there’s always Russia, Egypt, or India. And a lot of the medical graduates, after graduating, don’t want to be posted to rural areas due to personal family commitments or are just simply unwilling to work there.

In short, stupid and greedy politicians created this mess by approving too many private medical schools or being lax with quality control. So now it is incumbent that they solve the problem.

It has gotten so bad that I always check where the doctor graduated from before seeing him or her. And I don’t think I am the only one doing this.

Fuminghot: @BrownCheetah9736, cronies start these medical schools or any other colleges for that matter.

Make the poor students take PTPTN (National Education Fund) loans which most often is pocketed by the owners of these colleges. After that, they do not bother about what happens in the colleges.

One such college was in Bertam, Penang. When the college was closed down, the poor students who were left in the lurch had to still pay their loans.

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