Malaysian Houseman's on call allowance

1. There have been a lot of debates recently about the quality of our housemen in government training hospitals. Housemen in general receive a lot of flak from the general public about their incompetence.

2. To rub salt into wound, some idiotic politicians in their press conferences condemned and criticized house officers as if they deserve the death penalty and in a way that the politicians are always right and the doctors are always wrong.

3. The general perception, even among senior medical staff is that housemen who graduated from overseas especially from the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Czech Republic etc etc (so-called "communist" and former Soviet States) have a different standard of learning (much to the chagrin of the local graduates).

4. But it is known that there are hardworking overseas graduates who are out there to prove "the perception that overseas grads are useless" is not only wrong but biased.

5. The government has plans to churn out many doctors per year to match the rising population but our local institutions simply could not cater to the demand. Although we now have a lot of "shoplots" medical schools (as stated once by the DG of Health), the fact that Malaysia is still short of doctors especially in the rural areas, simply because nobody wants to serve there.

6. If we have more doctors, and encourage them to serve in rural areas with very high incentives and allowances, we might reverse the trend of doctors only focussing on serving the urban areas. Unfortunately, for housemen and even masters training, the government still has to focus on city/urban based hospitals for training, facilities and population purposes.

7. There are a lot of issues about "Malaysian house officers and medical officers in our healthcare system" which one can write a thesis on it alone.

8. I call upon the government to raise the HO's on-call allowance from RM100 to RM110 per call for weekdays and since HOs have to work for longer hours during weekend calls, to increase from RM110 to RM150 at least.

9. Cost of living has gone up tremendously and we cannot rely on the idea of "last time also we were paid peanuts but worked like shit as well". This argument just doesn't make sense anymore.

10. Of course, a doctor's first and foremost role is to serve the rakyat and the patients. But is a mere RM10 to RM40 increase too much to ask for? In fact, our subsidy rationalisation program can afford it from the current "adjustments" recently.

11. The government should pour money into the heartbeat of the nation. The houseman is the heartbeat of our nation, serving selflessly and dedicatedly with full of commitment and compassion.