Strike will tarnish image of doctors

ACCORDING to media reports, a group of 8,000 contract doctors currently serving with the Health Ministry have threatened mass resignations and a nationwide “strike” next month. An account known as “Mogok Doktor Malaysia” (Malaysian Doctors on Strike) has since emerged on social media.

The group’s demands include the absorption of all contract medical officers (MO) into permanent positions without any conditions or interviews; increment in basic salary and on-call rate; and resolution of the shortage of specialists, MO and house officers.

They also want the compulsory service term for medical officers to be reduced automatically to three years; a reduction in on-call and working hours for MOs and house officers; and a limit to on-call hours and working hours.

The issues are complicated and will take some time to resolve. Given the promise by the present government that the problems will be solved, contract doctors should not make a hasty decision like threatening mass resignations and a nationwide strike.

These doctors should take into consideration that an estimated 70% or more of the Malaysian population do not have any means of getting medical treatment other than in government hospitals and clinics.

For patients, the strike will create a lot of problems, including money wasted for transport, delays in treatment, irreversible damage to health, dangerous drug interruptions and even death.

The strike will also breach the implicit social contract between doctors and patients.

The strike would affect the weakest and most vulnerable segments of the population such as senior citizens and young children. Is it ethical then for doctors to resort to strike for material gain?

The image of the doctor as the key figure in what has been termed a healing relationship runs the risk of being tarnished.

MOHIDEEN ABDUL KADER

President

Consumers’ Association of Penang