Of Junior Doctors, Malaysia and UK

It has been over a year I have not written anything in this blog. I guess writing my thoughts and experiences on a regular basis is not really my forte. 

Oh well, just to update everyone who are following this blog, if there is any, about the new life that I decided to embark over a year ago. For those of you who knows me, I'm sure you guys are aware that I have graduated and currently working as an FY1 in Hull Royal Infirmary. I am actually approaching the end of my FY1 training, only one month left to go and then I'll be moving to Scunthorpe for my second year of foundation training.

Many of my friends have asked me to write and share my experiences of being a junior doctor here in the UK. To be honest, a junior doctor scope of jobs in the UK is not so much different than junior doctors in Malaysia. Given the knowledge and experience a of typical junior doctors has, we are not usually involve in long-term management or crucial decision making of a patient. We are, and always will be, the main people to have urgent bloods done, making specialty referrals, requesting imaging for patients and most importantly the person to type in those lengthy discharge summaries. In terms of salary, we get paid on average £2000 per month, which is equivalent to RM10000+ in Malaysia. It does sounds a lot but hey, bear in mind that I am not living in Malaysia and I have to save a lot to finance any further membership exams and courses in the future, and a return flight ticket UK-Malaysia does not come cheap either. 

However there are some major differences that make the work-life as a junior doctor in the UK far more comfortable and enjoyable compared to Malaysia. One of the big issues in Malaysian medical community is the inefficiency of the system. Why on earth Malaysia doctors have to do three ward rounds in a day? Houseman does his rounds at 7AM, then the MO(equivalent to SHO in the UK) come at 9AM to do his ward round at 9AM with the houseman and finally the consultant will come between 10AM-12PM to do his ward round with the other two. This is utterly ridiculous! In the UK, all members of the team will come at 8 or 9AM, do the ward round together and formulate a plan for the team to follow for the day . Isn't this just makes everything much easier? All F1 and SHO know what the plans are for the day, clear instructions and more time to do other important stuff. 

Another big problem in Malaysia hospitals are the pathology and requesting systems. Now I know that not all, but a few major hospitals in Malaysia are computerised nowadays. But still, most hospitals are still using paper-based system for blood tests and imaging requests. This just consumes too much precious time. One of my friends shared his experience working in a busy medical ward with me few months ago. In Malaysia, there are porters, also known as PPK (is this correct?), who are supposed to help the doctors run the ward such as sending of bloods to the lab, collect the printed results and sending patients to the radiology department. My friend have asked one of the porters to collect an urgent blood result at the lab whilst he was busy attending other patients. Instead of getting an "OK" reply, the porter replied back to him to do it himself as he was busy. A few minutes later, knowing that the blood result is important, my friend rushed off to the lab to get it. On the way to the lab, unsurprisingly, he could see that the porter was 'busy' puffing a cigarette with his mates, chatting happily under a tree near the hospital gate. Hopeless, totally hopeless. 

In the UK, if you have taken a patient blood, you can just send it off using the air-tube system and the results will be displayed in the computer within an hour or two. And if I wanted to request a chest X-ray for my patient, I just need to click on my request in the computer and the porter will come and take the patient for X-ray about an hour later. Same goes for CT and MRI scans. Then the images will be in the computer immediately after the scan for the team to scrutinise it later on. Simple, efficient and most importantly hassle-free!

If I were to write down and elaborate all the things that I am unsatisfied with Malaysian healthcare system such as bullying, assertion of seniority, out-dated medical equipments, post-call shifts, cronyism, racism  and many more, I would surely got stuck here in front of my laptops for a full whole day to splash it out. But I chose not to. 

I love Malaysia and please don't get me wrong about my criticisms above. I vowed to be back home one day. It's just not the right time yet. Personally, I think going back home straight after medical school does not really make my voice and opinion heard and I would eventually sink and assimilate in this inefficient system. 

Hopefully one day, when I am a fully fledged medical physician with a lot of experience at the back of my hand, I hope I will come back and make  a positive change to Malaysia's healthcare. 

Foundation, foundation and foundation

My brother just got back home from a day of interview at UTP. It is a compulsory selection process whereby all UTP Foundation hopefuls are required to attend. My mother called me last night and excitedly talking about the experience of the day on my brother's behalf. Alhamdulillah the interview went well for my little brother and all my family members managed to get home safely.

UTP is not actually my brother's first choice of continuing his tertiary studies. He is actually interested in joining the army and wanting to be a highly-regarded officer in the airforce. Hence, that's why he chose UPNM foundation as his top two choices in his UPU application form. What's left to do now, is to just wait for any respond and fingers-crossed that he gets what he wants!

My Life So Far

A lot has happened in the past few months. Alhamdulillah, I have passed my finals in January, which means I will not have anymore exams to sit. I also got the opportunity to do my clinical electives in Malaysia for two months and the highlight of the year was that I just got engaged to the most wonderful girl in the world! Now what's left to do is to just finish up my final hospital placements and student assistantship and then I'm done!

I hope and pray that my parents could be here in Manchester for my graduation, InsyaAllah expected to be held in July. I have been thinking a lot about all of this lately, even making a list of activities of what should be done whilst they are here. I want to show them around Manchester, places where I always shops for halal foods, restaurants where I usually hang out with my friends and most importantly sharing the moment of joy immediately after receiving my medical degree with them. 

Special moments such as this will only happen once in life and I really, really hope my parents could be here with me this July. :'(

I wanna be in Malaysia!

I  am supposed to be in Malaysia right now as it is the summer holiday for students studying in the UK. But, due to financial constraints, I have decided not to fly back home for summer this year. The flight ticket would costs me just above £1000 and I will only be in Malaysia for a month. Definitely not worth it. 

My sensible logic tells me to just save the money for my electives in January next year, which only costs me half the price and I could be in Malaysia for 2 months. 

However, it seems that my emotions have been derailing me from my sensible and logical thinking for the past few days. The thought of not being able to have Iftar and celebrate Eid with my family and relatives kept lingering in my mind endlessly. Sad, very sad indeed.

I hope I will get through all this swiftly and start the next term of academic year in peace. 

The Queen's Surprise Visit

It was just a typical morning for me. Getting up in the morning, though a bit late, had my breakfast, put on my clothes and head off to the hospital. The different thing that happened today was that when I got there, there was already a huge crowd gathering in front of the St. Mary's Children Hospital and Manchester Eye Hospital.

People were rushing and pushing each other as they lined up the shoulder of the road. Great Britain flags with the Royal crest on it was put up all over the place. And everyone was ready with their huge and super-fast DSLR cameras in their hands. I honestly do not have a single clue about what was going on at that time! But from the atmosphere, my mind was thinking that someone special and popular might be in the hospital area right now.

Then there it was! After about 15 minutes wandering around outside the hospital, out of no where, a pack of police officers on their huge BMW motorbike queued up and paraded the small road outside MRI. Following them from behind were few bunch of Mercedes and BMWs. And there was this one special car (it was a Rolls-Royce!) that I noticed a distance away from where I was standing. When this car approaced closer to me, I finally got to see who the special visitor was - it was the Queen!

She was in a pink suit, with the traditional royal pink hat, waving and smiling back to the crowd who cheered for her. At that time she was actually on her way to attend other ceremonies held in Manchester and had to leave the hospital. I quickly took out my phone that was held in my pocket, firmly placed it in my agile hands and snapped few pictures of the queen as her car drove slowly passed me. Now, I have proof that I have seen the Queen after nearly 4 years in the UK.

In all, it was absolutely a great experience to finally met the Queen up close in real life. And definitely a surprising one, though brief! Opportunity like this comes once in a life time, plus you need a bit of luck to along  the way. ;-)

p/s: the pictures are in my phone. i am just being lazy to upload it right now. maybe later!

Life goes on..

OSCEs have already finished last week. And with a short break of 4 days only, it's time to continue on the module with 3-weeks of SSC. I'll be doing an audit in a GP this time. Hope everything goes well!

Testing

This is just a test. Not a real post. Trying to figure out how to blog using a blogspot app that I have just installed in my phone.

posted from Bloggeroid