Materia Medica Malaysiana

Place doctors under a special scheme

KUALA LUMPUR: To address the perennial problem of shortage of doctors, the Government must follow the basic rule — keep your employees (doctors) happy! This should be the "bottom line", a private medical practitioner said concerning the on-going debate between the private medical fraternity and the Health Ministry over the latter's call in requesting doctors to serve several hours weekly at government hospitals.

"For a start, doctors must be looked at as a special entity and not lumped together with all the other government servants," he said.

"Besides, there must be a scheme in place to match their expertise and needs so as to keep them productive and long enough in the service.

"Remember, doctors, though being civil servants, have a market outside. So pay them the market's worth and keep them happy, or the market outside will lure them." He said that resorting to ‘cliches‘ like the mere Hippocratic oath, mandatory three-year service (excluding one year's housemanship), serving for suffering humanity and now compulsory service when renewing doctors Annual Practicing Certificate (APC), would mean the issue is not looked at from the whole perspective.

"So what you get in the end is a shortage of doctors, which has always been a perennial problem. It is simply that human resources (doctors) have not been managed well all along," said the doctor.

It was reported recently that Health Minister Datuk Chua Soi Lek had proposed that doctors from the private practice offer their services for a few hours on a weekly basis at government hospitals to address the problem of shortage of doctors and the lack of medical lecturers at government institutions.

Dr Chua also said the Ministry will study the feasibility of some 8,000 private doctors serving and providing training at government hospitals as a pre-requisite for renewing their APC.

However, said the Minister, the plan would only be carried out if the call for doctors in the private sector, especially in hospitals and polyclinics to come forward to help the government in providing training and offer their expertise, received a lukewarm response.

Meanwhile, another doctor said no amount of dialogues and meetings will bring about a change, unless the government backed the doctors with benefits that would ensure their welfare was not overlooked.

"Doctors are willing to serve the government as they also get to see a variety of cases, but their welfare must be ensured," she said.