Since
I have been working in the hospital for the past one year, I can’t help to
notice the burgeoning number of medical students exhibiting these non-purposeful
movements inside the wards. There could be up to 50 medical students in the
ward at one time, from various universities, private and public alike. While to
some of my colleagues, these students are a nuisance and just slow down our
work, I actually don’t mind having them around, because not too long ago I was like
them too. I understand how it feels to be there to get your cases for
teachings, to fill in log-books, to be eager to learn or do something, do some
real doctoring. But I can’t help to think “wow, all these people will become
doctors? There are 2 to 3-fold more of them in the ward compared to patients!”The
glut of new medical school graduates is obviously not breaking news. I brought
up this issue back when I was the President of the MMA Medical Student Society in
2011. Although I am still worried about the glut of new doctors coming in, I do
not agree that scaring these doctors-to-be into quitting medicine and find
something else to do is the way to go. I don’t think it helps those whose
parents has invested a lot in sending their children to medical school, using
all their savings, and having high hopes for their children to be the first
doctor in the family.
We should stop scaring future doctors that there will be no more jobs for them in the future. If we limit ourselves to the thinking of medicine involves only being in the mainstream specialties like being a cardiologist, neurologist, surgeon, paediatrician and the likes, yes there will be not enough places for all of us. But the new generation of doctors must see medicine as a much wider field, much of it unexplored, and any of our innate talents can be incorporated to advance this discipline of saving lives. Let's face it. Everyone is a genius in their own fields of interest. Even though you are erupting enthusiastic about doing hard-core clinical medicine, there must be certain departments in the hospital that brings you down to the level that made you think twice about being a full-fledged doctor. Forcing someone to be an outstanding doctor in a department that he or she is not interested in is like forcing Stephen Hawking to paint and Picasso to explain about the beginnings of the universe.
We are aspiring to be a first-world country, but we are still having the third-world way of seeing things. We still look at the less-mainstream specialty as ‘second-class’: the pathologists, basic medical scientists, pharmacologists, haematologists, public health specialists, family medicine specialists, etc. When one of my friends aspires to become a haematologist, my colleagues automatically thought that he just wants to be lazy and sit around answering the phone from house officers who need MO code for their blood investigations. Truth is, haematology is a far more challenging field, and I had witnessed it myself when I met with Dr Noryati Abu Amin when I worked for the WHO. She is a dedicated and highly respected Malaysian haematologist that has served the World Health Organization HQ inGeneva Malaysia
In the first world countries, many ‘less-mainstream’ specialty doctors, the researchers especially, achieve great things in the field of medicine, winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In some first world countries, you need to have a degree in something else before you can enroll into a medical school. They are very supportive of inter-disciplinary application of knowledge. Every medical student knows David Netter. He took a degree in arts before doing medicine. As a result, he incorporated art into anatomy, and hence produced one of the main references for anatomy that all medical students around the world use. InMalaysia
When we see the medical field as a vast, largely unexplored area of knowledge, we will see its job opportunities in abundance. So medical students, or all those aspiring to be doctors, come, come from where ever you are. No matter where you graduate from:Indonesia , India , Czech ,
Russia
“Come, let yourself be wrongCome, it's already begunCome, come aloneCome with fear, come with loveCome however you areJust come, come aloneCome with friends, come with foesCome however you areJust come, come aloneCome with me, then let goCome however you areJust come, come aloneCome so carefully closedCome however you areJust come…”
We should stop scaring future doctors that there will be no more jobs for them in the future. If we limit ourselves to the thinking of medicine involves only being in the mainstream specialties like being a cardiologist, neurologist, surgeon, paediatrician and the likes, yes there will be not enough places for all of us. But the new generation of doctors must see medicine as a much wider field, much of it unexplored, and any of our innate talents can be incorporated to advance this discipline of saving lives. Let's face it. Everyone is a genius in their own fields of interest. Even though you are erupting enthusiastic about doing hard-core clinical medicine, there must be certain departments in the hospital that brings you down to the level that made you think twice about being a full-fledged doctor. Forcing someone to be an outstanding doctor in a department that he or she is not interested in is like forcing Stephen Hawking to paint and Picasso to explain about the beginnings of the universe.
We are aspiring to be a first-world country, but we are still having the third-world way of seeing things. We still look at the less-mainstream specialty as ‘second-class’: the pathologists, basic medical scientists, pharmacologists, haematologists, public health specialists, family medicine specialists, etc. When one of my friends aspires to become a haematologist, my colleagues automatically thought that he just wants to be lazy and sit around answering the phone from house officers who need MO code for their blood investigations. Truth is, haematology is a far more challenging field, and I had witnessed it myself when I met with Dr Noryati Abu Amin when I worked for the WHO. She is a dedicated and highly respected Malaysian haematologist that has served the World Health Organization HQ in
In the first world countries, many ‘less-mainstream’ specialty doctors, the researchers especially, achieve great things in the field of medicine, winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In some first world countries, you need to have a degree in something else before you can enroll into a medical school. They are very supportive of inter-disciplinary application of knowledge. Every medical student knows David Netter. He took a degree in arts before doing medicine. As a result, he incorporated art into anatomy, and hence produced one of the main references for anatomy that all medical students around the world use. In
When we see the medical field as a vast, largely unexplored area of knowledge, we will see its job opportunities in abundance. So medical students, or all those aspiring to be doctors, come, come from where ever you are. No matter where you graduate from:
“Come, let yourself be wrongCome, it's already begunCome, come aloneCome with fear, come with loveCome however you areJust come, come aloneCome with friends, come with foesCome however you areJust come, come aloneCome with me, then let goCome however you areJust come, come aloneCome so carefully closedCome however you areJust come…”
