‘Doctors not the only frontliners’

Dr Lokman: We need more qualified and well-trained healthcare professionals to work alongside doctors in giving the best treatment.

WHILE the Covid-19 pandemic may have raised awareness among children about medical frontliners, much can still be done to interest them in the range of healthcare careers available for them to study for.

“Most students aspire to become doctors but not many know about the prospects of other healthcare professionals who play a big role in the management of patients,” said KPJ Healthcare University College vice-chancellor and graduate school dean Emeritus Prof Datuk Dr Lokman Saim.

Among these professionals include nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, medical imaging professionals or radiographers, radiologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, audiologists and optometrists.

According to Dr Lokman, the medicine of tomorrow will see all these healthcare professionals working together with doctors as a team in the treatment of patients.

“We’re talking about multidisciplinary healthcare. Healing a person is a collaborative effort, not a single person’s work,” he said.

Physiotherapists, he offered, focus on the science of movement, helping people to maximise their physical strength, motion, function, and overall well-being.“They work closely with orthopaedic surgeons. In fact, the latter cannot give the best treatment without a good physiotherapist.

“Likewise, radiographers work closely with radiologists in ensuring the right diagnosis for patients,” he asserted.

Delivering his talk entitled “Grooming Future Frontliners” at the Star Education Fair 2022 held recently, he explained that the multidisciplinary approach is needed as the medical field is getting more complicated with new medical practices, diverse causes of diseases, and complex investigations and diagnoses before treatment can be given.

“We have many diagnostic tools such as computed tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and positron emission tomography (PET) scans. We need people with the knowledge of running all these machines.

“We also have many devices such as hearing aids, cochlear implants and brainstem implants. There are professionals who can manage this,” he said.

He added that as surgeries are getting more microscopic and involve robotics, surgeons need assistance in the operating rooms too.

“Recently, there is training for operating room assistants, which had never existed. This specialised person’s role is to assist the surgeon in using the equipment when an operation is ongoing,” he said.

“This is a new career which students can study for at the diploma, bachelor’s, master’s and even PhD levels,” he added.

Essentially, these healthcare professionals, emphasised Dr Lokman, need to have knowledge, skills and training that are on par with doctors in order to communicate with the latter.

Gone are the days when pharmacists only dispense drugs after receiving the doctors’ prescriptions, he pointed out.

“Pharmacists need to have updates on all the drugs available and knowledge of drug use, for example, in intensive care and cardiac patients.

“They can also specialise in clinical pharmacy where they work together with doctors to decide on the best medication for particular diseases in patients,” he said.

In all these healthcare fields, the professionals can subspecialise in different areas, said Dr Lokman, adding that they can also further their knowledge up to master’s and PhD levels.

“Frontliners are an important career. We need more qualified and well-trained healthcare professionals to work alongside doctors in giving the best treatment.“I want to emphasise that the skills of these professionals are not low-level skills. For example, in nursing, you can have progression by holding a diploma and going on to higher levels of learning.

“You can even have a PhD in nursing. It is rare for one to reach this level, so imagine the career opportunities you will have. Higher education institutions, for one, will want to hire you,” he said.

He added that nursing is not solely a career for the ladies, as the number of male students pursuing it as a career has been improving over the years.

Another healthcare career that Dr Lokman encouraged students to consider is that of the speech therapists.

“We have shortage of these therapists in Malaysia but the enrolment number of students taking up speech sciences is very low. The career pathway is very good but somehow it is not popular among students,” he shared.

On what attributes one needs to have to be considered suited to these healthcare professions, Dr Lokman had this to say: “As you will be dealing with patients and the community, you need to have an interest in patient care, and be caring and willing to give time to patients.

“It is important that you exercise teamwork as you will be managing patients together with doctors and pharmacists, among others.

“Discipline is just as important, like in any other career.”

Where to study

High on a student’s priority when choosing a healthcare education institution should be its skills lab, besides looking at its library, and the facilities it has to offer for delivering online and offline lectures.

A well-equipped skills lab, said Dr Lokman, is very important as healthcare training involves a lot of simulation.

“For example, in nursing, you learn how to dress a wound with a mannequin while medical students are trained using cadavers and animals to improve their skills before they treat real patients.

“Medical students also need to be trained to use the surgical microscope to carry out operations such as in the ear and eye,” he explained.

Physiotherapists need a good clinical skills lab too, he said.

As most of the instruments and equipment in hospitals use robotics and information technology, the institution should have these facilities to train students, as well.

Another factor to consider, said Dr Lokman, is whether the institution has an affiliated hospital.

“Look at the number of patients in the hospital. The more, the better,” he said, stressing that one’s hospital training is crucial before graduation.

“It is also important that these institutions expose students to working as a team,” he added.