Psychiatry

Doing psychiatry as my last rotation seems to be the right rotation for me . There were not many lectures/tutorial that I need to attend every week and each person has their own individualised timetables. At first, the individualised timetable seems a bit complicated to understand. However, after reading it several times, it seems easy to comprehend.

I have lots of free time in this rotation. Having lots of free time is a great blessing for me. I can now start to revise for my coming semester exam, although I’m not really sure what will come up in the exam.

After doing nearly two weeks of psychiatry, I still haven't found anything interesting in this rotation yet. I hope I can find something useful in this rotation. Otherwise, psychiatry will not be an option in my future career list.

How much a young doctor earns?

Taken from The Star

lt starts at RM2.456.39 (Grade UD41, P1T6) as against those of other schemes of service. The initial salary takes into consideration the period of six years that an undergraduate takes to qualify as a medical officer.

Furthermore, the total takehome pay for newly-appointed medical officers is RM4,058.39 when all the monthly allowances and Incentive Payment for Critical Service (the highest compared to those of other critical schemes) are factored in .

In addition, medical officers als o receive the following allowances:

> On-call allowance at the rate of RM150 per night;

> Locum at the rate of RM80 per hour; and

> Incentive payment for specialist ranging from RM1,600 to RM3,100 per month, depending on the grade of the officer.

The ruling that will entitle newly-appointed medical officers to receive RM6,000 per month will take affect in 2010, after the current batch of medical graduates have completed their internship at a local government hospital.

To further advance their career prospects, the Government has improved promotion opportunities of medical officers by creating more promotional posts. At the same time, the Government has increased the number of scholarships for the Masters programme to 600.

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Will this be enough to lure Malaysia medical students to work in Malaysia public hospital? Personally, I don't think this will be enough to keep doctors in public health care system. There are various factors that need to be improved such as working environment, more opportunities to do specialist training at overseas, opportunity to work in private sector and the Ministry of Health should conduct more surveys from junior doctors to capture the suffering and burden among young doctors.

Any opinion?

HAVE WE NOT opened up thy heart,
and lifted from thee the burden
that had weighed so heavily on thy back?
And [have We not] raised thee high in dignity?
And, behold, with every hardship comes ease:
verily, with every hardship comes ease!
Hence, when thou art freed [from distress], remain steadfast,
and unto thy Sustainer turn with love.

[Al-Syarh: 1-8]

Energy efficient of Google search

Taken from Google Blog

Activity	Google Searches
CO2 emissions of an average daily newspaper (PDF) (100% recycled paper)	850
A glass of orange juice	1,050
One load of dishes in an EnergyStar dishwasher (PDF)	5,100
A five mile trip in the average U.S. automobile	10,000
A cheeseburger	15,000
Electricity consumed by the average U.S. household in one month	3,100,000

read more

p/s: I found it funny to compare the number of Google searches with a glass of orange juice

End of rural

I finished my rural rotation last friday. For the last three weeks, I have been away from Melbourne.

After spending two weeks and a half at Heathcote, I personally think that rural rotation needs to be shorter in duration and Emergency rotation should be longer. There is not much to be learned during rural rotation.

You will be able to see how each health services are coping with limited resources in rural setting. Plus, you may be able to visit any interesting places around the town. If there are aborigines around, you can visit them and learn more about their culture and history.

Anyway, my three weeks of holiday in rural rotation has ended. Now, it is time for me to learn about psychiatry and hopefully my next rotation would be more interesting than RAPP and rural.