healthy, happy + mentally alert...

Grateful to Azri: for wonderful sets of notes on his recent course of Advanced USS OBGY Course in Ipoh, and also thankful to all great lecturers of that course who provided those great sets of note.

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I read the following in NST today

MEDICAL SERVICE: We need happy, healthy and alert housemen

ST, Kuala Lumpur

LAST week, I chanced upon a copy of the May 2009 issue of the medical fraternity's MMA News . The cover of the journal was titled "Government doctors -- modern-day slaves". I was pleasantly surprised to see an article on housemanship inside -- "Housemanship training in Malaysia" -- by the Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Mohd Ismail Merican.

This was, in fact, his keynote address at the First Seminar on Housemanship Training in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and Britain in Kuala Lumpur on April 25.

He revealed findings from a recent study on housemen in 28 government hospitals:

"Two-thirds of them (67.8 per cent) found housemanship training highly stressful and 53 per cent of them had sometimes thought of quitting because they could not cope with the stress.

"The highest level of stress was related to working hours and workload. Thirty to 40 per cent of them never had time for social or recreational activities. 21.8 per cent required counselling and 5.8 per cent needed treatment".
If more than half the medical interns had sometimes thought of quitting, and a quarter of them were in need of medical counselling or treatment, imagine how stressful their working conditions must be.

The health minister should take this study's findings seriously. There are not enough doctors in Malaysia, hence we cannot afford to lose them even before they have completed their housemanship.

The minister must have the doctors' best interests at heart and should take care of them. They should be healthy, happy and mentally alert to perform efficiently.

It is, therefore, only logical that there is an immediate revamp in our archaic, unhealthy and hazardous system of housemanship.

Only then can we, the rakyat, feel safe in the hands of government doctors.

After reading it, I immediately have a sudden urge to pee.

Probably I was thinking about the urinal below.

Forgive me, for putting up such a pic, if you're eating, drinking or consuming some stuff while reading this, probably you should stop multitasking.

Basically, for those females who never went to guy toilets before, those are urinal for people who pee while standing, not necessarily confine to the male gender.

Back then, there were scarcity of house officers, yet problems were minimal. They worked like hell during housemanship, but they are good or great consultants nowadays.

Now, I can see house officers jam-packed the whole department, yet a lot of stuff left undone. Some house officers were master of 'siam sai hong' (in hokkien for avoiding west wind). Their principle of work is the less you do, the less mistakes you'll do. Probably so, but you'll safely go through housemanship with zero knowledge and major bullshitting capabilities.

Okay, back to those lovely urinal...

What's the point of having squeaky clean, disinfected, shining urinal, but not functional at all?

What's the point of having healthy, happy and mentally alert but they're deficient in knowledge, attitude and moral values?

The ball shouldn't fall on the court of medical practitioners who work their asses off treating patient while educating the weaker house officer, but should be in the hands of those Board of something something or xx xx medical school to release these 'doctors' into the community.

A tired but knowledgeable house officers do mistakes sometimes,

But a healthy, happy and mentally alert but zero-knowledge house officers either

do mistakes all the time... or don't do anything at all...

Surprised? Don't be.

P.S. No, I am not writing this to NST. I don't like mainstream media. They wouldn't like the urinal anyway.

P.S.S No, I am not equating urinal to all house officers. I am only equating the killer ones.