Dr Veenesh: Coming home was the best decision he made as he could be near his family.
PETALING JAYA: After 18 years, he clocked out of England, arriving home with just a suitcase – and found the door to a new life.
Having spent his early adulthood working for the UK government-funded National Health Service (NHS), Dr Veenesh Selvaratnam knew the Malaysian public healthcare was his eventual calling.
But he did not know that serendipity awaited him when he came home in December 2020.
“I applied to the Health Ministry and was sent to the Alor Setar Hospital where, coincidentally, my dad began his medical career as a houseman. He was the reason I became a doctor.
“There was excitement and uncertainty about starting a new job in Malaysia. But it worked out well as I met my lovely wife in that hospital,” he said.
Dr Veenesh was subsequently posted to Kuantan Hospital before moving on in 2022 to join Malaysia’s largest teaching hospital – Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) – as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, as well as a senior lecturer at UM.
In an interview, he recounted how he began charting his homecoming via Talent Corp’s Returning Expert Programme (REP).
“It had always been my plan to come home. But I wanted to be fully qualified as a hip and knee specialist before doing so,” he said.
Dr Veenesh, who studied medicine at the University of Liverpool, trained and worked with the NHS for 15 years before joining Manchester University Hospital as a consultant in March 2020.
He is among the few REP returnees who opted for the public sector in Malaysia.
In a way, his journey home began in 2017 when Talent Corp gave a talk in London.
By 2020, he sorted out his registrations with the Malaysian Medical Council and the National Specialist Register – which required proof of competency such as the training he received and the fellowships attended, prior to applying for the REP.
The entire process to apply and get approval from Talent Corp took about a year.
“Talent Corp is good. But there was a lot of paperwork. I am lucky, as I am an organised person. I have files even from my school days,” he said.
Some of his friends, he said, wanted to return to Malaysia but were “not so determined” in navigating the documentation process.
He commended Talent Corp, which introduced a one-stop online portal last year.
“It’s good (for the applicant) to get regular updates; to know what other forms you need to submit,” he said.
These days, the man from Mentakab who left Manchester for Malaysia is a busy but happy doctor at UMMC.
“I wanted to join a teaching hospital as I have always been interested in research as well. And complex cases are referred here,” said Dr Veenesh, 43.
Since his return, his accomplishments included being the surgeon who performed Malaysia’s first-ever daycare total hip replacement operation.
His father, who died about a month after Dr Veenesh came home, would have been proud of his youngest child; someone who did not start as a straight-A student but got more serious in his studies when he saw both his elder sister and brother entering medical school.
Medical science is their “family business”. Besides his father and siblings, Dr Veenesh’s 76-year-old mother as well as his wife and father-in-law are a “Dr” in their own right. And like him, his sister and brother are married to doctors, too.
Looking back, his homecoming was not in the best of times as he had rushed home with just a suitcase to see his father who had been hospitalised.
Due to the travel restrictions as the Covid-19 pandemic was at its peak, Dr Veenesh wrote to the Health Ministry, seeking help to expedite his return.
Though he cherished the friendships forged in England – and the Liverpool football matches he watched at Anfield – he said that coming home was the best decision he made as he could be near his family.
“Besides, I have always liked the lifestyle here,” said Dr Veenesh.
He said that people still wondered why he chose to return home despite him having a rewarding job here and welcoming fatherhood; but for him, the grass has always been greener on the Malaysian side.
