YOURSAY | Get to the root of house officer bullying

YOURSAY | ‘It is the unmanageable influx of questionable medical schools.’

MP SPEAKS | The quandaries of junior doctors

Culture of fear leaves junior doctors vulnerable, says MMA

MS: Smart and diligent house officers with a reputation for meticulous attention to detail invariably do not invite bullying - more work definitely... but not the kind of "harassment" which appears to be the bone of contention here.

What the country is witnessing is an unmanageable influx of questionable medical schools which has put an additional strain on those already coping to serve as doctors.

It is a direct consequence of the policy allowing cronies of the regimes past and present to set up poorly-scrutinised medical schools which, in turn, waste no time churning out "doctors" like in some assembly line.

The situation is not different in other employment situations where ill-equipped "graduates" with no mastery of the basics, no communication skills and no definite aptitude for hard work, flood the market expecting to be treated with kid gloves... and trained on the basics all over again.

For a long time in Malaysia, the problem of training and education has been managed by postponing the arduous process, to get the "uncooked material" out of the door as soon as possible so that the poorly educated or ill-trained is someone else's problem.

There is a price for foolish policies and it is being paid now.

Drngsc: Former Health Minister Dzulkefy Ahmad, the problem is systemic. If all the junior doctors speak out now, there will be no doctors left in service.

We have to revamp the whole service, beginning with closing half the private medical schools. These are the start of the problem - poorly taught/trained graduates with a deplorable attitude and poor work capacity.

Those junior doctors who were bullied before, are now the senior ones doing the bullying.

Hrrmph: Why are so many bullies populating the positions of power?

If seniors call other seniors out for bullying behaviour, the bullies will back down, which makes one wonder how they could have flourished. This suggests that many bullies tacitly accept or encourage unacceptable behaviour.

The government must start behaving like a normal employer and start terminating the employment of those who misbehave. And not just transfer them or change their responsibilities.

Start firing these people and watch everyone improves their work ethics.

The Wakandan: The system itself can offer ample space for bullying, human nature being such.

It looks like the junior doctors’ immediate superiors have too much leverage over them. The appraisal system could be reviewed to make it in such a way to be more evidence-based (for example, credentialing based on cases or working hours attained) instead of just a pure rating system.

The immediate appraising officers should not be just one person but can consist of a team of two or more besides the second appraiser.

The determinant for renewal of a contract, training and transfer should not be based on the yearly appraisal alone but should include other factors and be deliberated by another team of senior officers.

Something like that would avoid an immediate superior having a stifling hold over them, which is a likely source of abuse.

Lone_Star: When there are complaints in the workplace, there are many factors to be looked into.

All components need to be examined: the junior doctors, the paramedical staff, the more senior doctors, the supervising specialists and the workplace itself, and of course, the system behind it all.

The Health Ministry knows of the problems faced and they are not new ones. But the Health Ministry and the government have had little interest in solving them for the past six decades.

Of course, over time, more problems have arisen. There appears to be no will to deal with the matter. The Health Ministry and the government just want them to disappear into thin air.

The solutions are out there, such as controlling the mass production of junior doctors, ensuring the quality of medical schools, opening up more training posts, ensuring healthy and quality supervision of trainees and ensuring more permanent posts for doctors.

Bullying of trainees aka junior doctors is but just one of the Health Ministry’s problems. If these problems are not dealt with promptly, the country will see more brain drain of medical doctors and specialists to greener pastures.

YellowCat1156: I totally agree that bullying of junior doctors should not be tolerated.

I, however, urge this issue not to be one-sided. A similar avenue must be given to senior doctors to voice their grouses and concerns and to report junior doctors who fail to achieve a minimum standard.

If this issue is addressed only from the house officers' point of view, there may very well come a time that their weary supervisors may just sign off on their appraisals without caring if they meet the standards.

SayNoToFrogs: Indeed, get to the root of the problem. Bullying is common, but sometimes, truth be told, the standard of doctors is wanting.

If you are a senior medical officer and have to mentor the juniors, it is difficult if they are poorly trained. It’s hard to blame anyone if the fuse is short and the environment is very busy.

To all the new doctors, work hard and be competent.

Em Chan: I was a senior specialist in a major government hospital who had the bad luck of being the target of harassment by a new head of department - one who is well-known in the fraternity to be, to put it mildly, a jerk.

Because there's nothing illegal about being a jerk (and because he knows how to suck up to his superiors), nobody cared to do anything about him – they were content to let him terrorise the entire department.

There were mass requests for transfers out from that department, the deteriorating mental health of the medical officers, and the resignation of three specialists, including one senior subspecialist who was willing to give up his subspecialty practice (which, by the way, is in great demand) just to leave that terrible department.

When I gave my resignation notice, and clearly demonstrated the lack of will of senior management in handling these bullies, this was the reply I got from the head of services (our mutual superior): "Unfortunately the circumstances have made it difficult to work in your current place."

It's no secret that doctors usually stay with the Health Ministry because their personalities aren't tolerated anywhere else - leading to a glut of senior doctors rising to the top of the Health Ministry who are, to put it mildly, jerks.

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