Give serious thought to working hours of housemen

I AM currently undergoing my housemanship training in one of the main training hospitals in Ipoh. I am writing this to highlight the issues being faced by most housemen in my training institution.

In my opinion, housemen are being exploited in the current training system. The Government directive issued last year on the shift training system is not being followed. Under the directive, a houseman’s working hours is fixed at 60 hours a week but, I have been working a minimum of 70 hours a week, and sometimes up to 81 hours a week. The long hours is affecting a houseman’s performance as it is extremely exhausting.

In addition, we are rostered for on-call duty without rest days afterwards eventhough the new shift system has been introduced.

Worse, under the directive, we will be granted two days off but it has been reduced to one day and now just continuous hours without a single day off. It really impacts on the quality of training a houseman is receiving as there is only so much the mind can take in when it is exhausted. When the issue is raised with superiors, the response is to take that as a learning opportunity.

In contrast, the training hospital in Penang has successfully introduced the shift system, leading to a much better learning experience.

Furthermore, the training system has deteriorated as workload increases compared to when the superior officers received their training. Due to high workload and increased pressure, superior officers are pre-occupied with endless tasks, leaving them with minimal or no time for the juniors.

When juniors are unable to receive good knowledge, subsequently they are less competent to pass on their experience to the new housemen, leading to an undesirable fall in the quality and performance of the new housemen.

Having gone through five or more gruelling years at medical school, we were all keen and enthusiastic in contributing to the nation’s healthcare. However, the current training system does not appear to provide any form of support in our journey to becoming highly competent and professional doctors.

I genuinely hope that the Government will give serious consideration to these issues and come up with realistic solutions to resolve them.

EXHAUSTED HOUSEMEN

Ipoh