Exam for docs won’t cause brain drain

Exam for docs won’t cause brain drain

I'm sure I'm not the first one who wished that this exam was implemented earlier. Such a big potential loophole for scholars who do not wish to do their housemanship in Malaysia after graduation. We can choose to fail this examination in the act of free will and thus deem incompetent to practice in our homeland. Just joking. There are many reasons why we choose to come back instead of serving in a foreign land.

Change of topic.

Almost 3 months into my training and I'm still grumbling and complaining every single day. I blame tiredness for sucking away each and every passion I have for medicine and helping mankind. There are still occasions where I'd reached my breaking point and almost walk away from whatever cruel act that I was carrying out on screaming and crying children or some who are too weak to even make a sound. There are also times when I'd just turned cold blooded and went ahead without caring about their pleas to finish the job so that I can go home postcall. Seriously, I don't know how long inhumane working hours can provide optimum training for house officers. Most of the time, nothing gets absorbed by the organ sitting between the ears.

House officers are not distributed evenly in Malaysia. Seriously, they're not. I hear others boasting about only 4 calls a month, having time to play football, never covering a ward alone. I can only say that the grass is always greener on the other side. I should start accepting my own fate and stop complaining. Our seniors had it worse. I wished that there is a labour law in Malaysia safe guarding sufficient resting time. With the numbers of HOs now, I'm sure we have the capacity to implement safer working hours.

I wonder how many patients realised the dangers of overworked doctors and some even complained that we switch on the lights in the middle of the night while administering IV drugs and even on our technique of drugs giving. Am I supposed to administer drugs in the dark? I almost encourage the father of a patient to lodge an official complaint when he said, 'If you don't know how to administer IV drugs, then don't administer!' when I accidentally caused some backflow into the 3-way tap. Well, I can guarantee that none of the house officers has had proper training in IV drugs administration prior to any of our oncalls. We learnt it from each other. Another thing about some nurses, they're not supportive at all. Some don't even carry out their jobs properly and yet they start criticising you for minor mistakes, even scold you for wrong techniques and worse of all, when you ask them for help, they complain first and then reluctantly drag themselves over to help. That's counted lucky, try walking over to the nurses station to ask for a hand and end up not getting any thus patient's mother had to help out instead. Hmmmmmm......that's professionalism for you.

I was really angry at one occasion when I was asked to remove a umbilical artery catheter from a few days old infant during my oncall and the nurse told me that usually the house officer removes it. I'd never done one before but was pushed (or you can say coerced) by the nurse to do it. Only advice that she gave me when I asked where was the appropriate place to start cutting she said 'Just cut lah!'. Great, whatever happens to this poor baby will be my fault and I wonder who was the super enthusiastic doctor who tied so many knots. When I face the blade toward the catheter, the nurse started scolding me cause I might cut the catheter but it was impossible to even get in between the thread, so when I asked her how else should I cut, she couldn't even suggest anything. Luckily, my oncall MO came to the rescue in the end when I gave up and looked for him for help. Even then, no one taught me the right way of removing until today!!!!! I love my ward's MOs cause they're so helpful and they teach you the correct method before setting you off into the wild. That should be the way. It's only then I felt glad ending up at Paeds ICU ward despite all the stress and long working hours. Will make the best of my placement there.

I'm apologising to all my patients as I am forced to make you my guinea pigs most of the time due to poor training provided for housemans.