IT is tough being a senior doctor right now in the Health Ministry. July is a month of stereotyping and name-calling for us, based on the grievances of our junior doctors.

There are always two sides of the same coin, and in every organisation, there is always the good, the bad and the ugly. We do not condone acts of physical assault, and victimising individuals with abuses and sexual harassment.

To the young doctors who have faced such challenges and stood up to the perpetrators – thank you very much. Your bravery is much appreciated.

When things go out on social and mainstream media, the narrative may sometimes be misinterpreted, and confusing.

A study whose methodology is unclear and findings were taken at face value is now taken as the national indicator of the quality of teaching in the health profession. It warranted the health minister himself to divert his time and attention to the issue, going to the ground for a heart-to-heart with house officers.

The narrative now is “Health Ministry hospitals are run by evil senior doctors, specialist and consultants”.

While educators are specially trained on how to educate and train students, we senior doctors have none. Questions that we are missing now are:

1. Do we see any workshops and sessions on teaching methodology being run by the ministry, universities, Malaysian Medical Concil or Malaysian Medical Association, on how to train junior doctors? We see more workshops on the horrors and fears of medico-legal or malpractice claims.

2. How do we teach junior doctors to understand their importance to society, the economy, and the nation’s development?

3. How do you impress upon junior doctors the importance of due diligence, that the mere mislabelling of blood samples can lead to deaths from transfusion error?

4. How do you impress upon junior doctors the fact that there is no reset button in a patient’s life? If you fail to save a life, the faces of the grieving family are stuck with you throughout your career.

5. If we have house officers performing dangerously (thus, being unfit to become doctors), how do we consultants advise the termination of their services? It is not easy, and almost impossible.

There are many housemen who do not meet the safety standards of medical practice, who are allowed to finish their housemanship, attain a licence and serve in government hospitals. Our tax dollars are paying for their high salaries, based on civil servant grades.

6. How, within six months, do we train a junior doctor to understand the safety tenets of medicine within a specialty, without them killing anyone with the limited experience they have? House officers now demand working hours that are similar to clerks in the civil service.

Many of us reflect on our experience. Ask any doctor in Malaysia who has left a mark on you.

The consultants and specialists who cared enough to scold you did so, so that you could learn from your mistakes. Even now, when we see our peers, our teachers, we would laugh remembering how they shaped us. We would walk up to them and say, “Remember me? You used to call me… because…”. Among us, we would laugh and say, “I was trained by that lion, dragon, tiger”, and many more names we fondly called them.

Here is what the DOBBS study quoted by the health minister failed to highlight: doctors around the world have the highest stress levels, and have a high suicide risk. Being a doctor means embracing the stress levels, the high suicide risk, many depressive episodes, and best of all, getting scolded by patients and their relatives for just doing your job.

The higher you progress in medicine, the more stress you endure. Not only you, but your family, too. There will be days and nights when you will be missed at home because the hospital needs your services.

Things do not get easier; you just learn to cope. You cope because during your housemanship, you were trained to be resilient, and to put your patients first. There is no sugarcoating the life of a doctor.

Thus, we hope the roadshow by the health minister on the issue will not turn into a witch-hunt. Because in the end, how do we trust a minister who, through his actions, has taken sides based on a survey’s low-level evidence? – July 30, 2018.

* A Doctor In the House reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.