Instill dedication among doctors

It's a vocation,make sure you are right for it

I refer to your report “Becoming a doctor” (NST,March 17)

Health Minister Datuk Dr.Chua Soi Lek has rightly pointed out the fallacies of becoming a doctor for sake of glamour. I think parents and students, who are considering medicine as a career, must take his advice seriously.

It is astonishing to realize we are churning out 1,600 doctors every year, with the number increasing to 2,500 annually by 2010. So the market is going to be very competitive, even for specialists, as we will have a glut of doctors by 2020.

It would take an average of 10 to 12 years or really hard work ant toil for an individual to become a specialist in a certain discipline. He would further need another 4-5 years to get the clinical experience before he is really ready to become an independent practicing clinician.

This is a very long time in the life of an individual and unless he motivated for the right reasons, he would not turn out to be a good and dedicated doctor. Unfortunately we have many such doctors in our fraternity these days.

Dr.Chua and his ministry is just interested in fulfilling the doctor-people ratio. They hope to achieve their target ratio of one doctor for every 600 citizens before 2020. This may be possible but it is more important to have quality rather than quantity. The latter can easily achieved but the former requires years of planning and training.

In the sixties and seventies we had very much fewer doctors and specialists but work went on reasonably well. All patients admitted were seen by the respective specialists daily without fail, sometimes more frequently as the needs dictate. Work goes on irrespective of whether it is a weekend of public holiday. Furthermore no overtime was paid.

Today we have 5-6 times more specialists in the hospitals but still very frequently get complains that specialists do not see their patients, even the critically ill ones, for days at a stretch. Their patients are managed by junior doctors with minimal experience. They are paid all sort of allowances today but there is simply no dedication on the part of our doctors to their profession and this is a very sad development in our country today.

Medicine has become commercialized and the government must stop this rot immediately. Educate and counsel our students so that only those who really have the vocation go ahead to do medicine.

The ministry should ideally strive for both quality and quantity of doctors, if we need to compromise on this it should be the latter.

Dr.Chris Anthony