LETTER | Have a heart for housemen, medical officers

LETTER | The laments of housemen and fresh medical officers of being overworked has to be given due consideration.

They need to be treated fairly and humanely when they seek experience while in training. 

If they are overworked, they simply cannot perform well as a tired body and mind will do more harm than good. 

Similarly, I would stop texting messages over the phone when my mind was tired, for I knew that I would be typing nonsense. Even worse, it could be sent to the wrong person!

Housemen during training need to be guided with compassion so that they will in return be able to serve society well.

Even in the teaching line, that is how it is. The trainees are guided tactfully into the system. 

In the medical field, lives are at stake, so it is very important that the housemen are trained without duress. 

Only then will they be able to acquire the necessary practical skills to do justice to all the knowledge that they have acquired diligently while at medical school.

The Hippocratic Oath should be respected at all times. It should always be “service before self”. The question of being tormented and being taken advantage of should never be the order of the day with regard to the housemen and junior medical officers.

These housemen and medical officers enter the medical field full of enthusiasm and vigour. Their interest should never be doused right at the fledgling stage itself.

The seniors should be a source of inspiration and a go-to person for advice and assistance, instead of being the root cause of wanting to leave the medical profession after having slogged for five years to become doctors. 

On another note, the government too should look into the need to build more hospitals, for example in Seremban and Klang, to help alleviate the problem of government hospitals being flooded with patients. This would indirectly help lessen the burden on the housemen and fresh medical officers. 

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.