Pages

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The life of a houseman officer

In a short word, it is extremely busy and stressful.

Once you graduated from a medical school, you need to work for at least 2 years as a houseman (junior doctor) before you can pursue further specialisation in medical field. That is the scenario in Malaysia.

Within these 2 years, you need to do 6 postings which are Medicine, Surgery, Orthopaedic, Obstetric and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Accident and Emergency (A&E). This year, the Ministry of Health introduce the seventh posting which is Anaesthetic. You can choose either to do Anaesthetic or A&E as your final posting. If you choose Anaesthetic as your last posting, you will be automatically being absorbed into Anaesthetic department once you finished your housemanship years. 

How is the routine lifestyle as a junior doctor? Depending on which posting you do, you can either start working as early as 4-5 am or come to the hospital around 7am. You typically finish your work by 10-11pm every day. Although there are few postings where you finish your job by 5pm and you can go home to rest in bed. 

In term of oncall, basically you start your work as usual and continue working throughout the night and finish the on-call period by the end of next day. If your routine working day finished at 10pm, then your oncall finish at 10pm the next day. Sometimes where the oncall is not that busy, you may get few hours of sleep. Otherwise you won't be able to sleep at all for the next 36-48 hours. You will be extremely sleep deprived by the end of your oncall. 

Despite that, the situation in Malaysia is improving. There are more doctors graduating from various medical schools in Malaysia to some extent, there has been rumours that doctors may be jobless within the next few years due to the sheer number of doctors in Malaysia.

Will continue writing about this some time later. I have to sleep early tonight as I will be oncall tomorrow.

9 comments:

Norain MT said...

It has been so long since you last updated your blog, doc. Hisashiburi :)

Anonymous said...

Salam hafiz, good to c u're updating ur blog finallY!

Anonymous said...

Salam
I've been waiting and waiting for ur post since u share a lot of knowledge/experience I've not learnt/faced yet. I really do want to read something abt ur experience during housemanship, as I'll be graduated soon. Anyway, which hospital u're destined to currently? Slmt Hr Raya. Maaf Zahir & Batin to you.

Hafiz
Mansoura, Egypt.

Anonymous said...

nehh shortage of docs/specialists/subspecialists will be for another 10 years or maybe more. be glad for the salary raised eventho 6k it's not that much compared to the neighbouring countries.

Hafiz said...

to Hafiz Egypt,

I'll do my best to update the stories as a houseman as often as possible.

to anynonymous,

hopefully that will be true although the number of houseman is at the moment is increasing exponentially.

farain said...

omg sounds cool & stressful hahaha :D

khairul said...

I was a housemen in Hosp Serdang, life was good, had a lot of teaching sessions, my consultants were nice and caring now I am a working med officer in Kuantan! In medical department! Good luck to all housemen!

Anonymous said...

Hi, Just a quick question:

Normally, when does an HO start working for the government after graduation? August? September?

Hafiz said...

normally HO starts to work within 1-2 month after the interview with Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Awam. Once you graduates from medical school, you need to apply from SPA and fill in MMC registration form as soon as possible,

currently there are delays in getting job as a houseman in Malaysia due to sheer number of medical graduates in Malaysia