Tired Doctors...

Lately, people around me were talking about the issue of ‘napping’ doctors in the Emergency Department in one of our government hospital (see here…). After this issue, lot of doctors voiced out the unsatisfaction with the ‘blind’ complaint and publicity. Those complaints suddenly aroused from the doctors that had been working in patience without complaining anything before.

One of the complaint was a letter from a ‘tired doctor’ which was published in Utusan Malaysia. This article was also shared among my medical colleagues in facebook, who I believed also shared the same experiences with this ‘tired doctor’.

Luahan rasa doktor yang penat

SAYA merupakan salah seorang pegawai perubatan di salah sebuah hospital di ibu negara. Buat pengetahuan umum, malam semalam saya pulang ke rumah pukul 9 malam setelah keluar bertugas mulai pukul 7 pagi pada hari sebelumnya. Saya pulang setelah habis menjalankan tugas on-call. Cuba bayangkan bekerja selama 36 jam tanpa henti. Mungkin dapat tidur sejam dua (lebih baik tidak tidur langsung). Pulang ke rumah dengan harapan dapat bermesra dengan anak dan isteri, tetapi ternyata saya terlalu penat.

Biar saya jelaskan bagaimana tugas seorang doktor secara kasarnya. Kami akan memulakan kerja seawal pukul tujuh pagi dengan berada di wad bagi menyiapkan data pesakit di wad bagi tujuan ward round bersama doktor pakar. Secara amnya, ward round akan tamat sekitar pukul 10 hingga 11 pagi. Ini mengambil kira purata 30 orang pesakit di dalam wad.

Selepas itu, kami mesti bergegas ke klinik untuk merawat pesakit luar. Ini menjawab rungutan pembaca yang mempertikaikan mengapa mereka perlu tunggu lama di klinik pesakit luar. Secara purata kami memeriksa dalam 100 - 200 pesakit luar setiap hari. Secara puratanya juga akan terdapat lima hingga tujuh orang doktor di klinik. Jadi seorang doktor akan memeriksa antara 20 hingga 30 orang pesakit.

Harus diingat kami mesti kembali ke wad selepas itu untuk melihat perkembangan pesakit yang lebih tenat di dalam wad. Maka secara kebiasaannya kami akan tamat merawat pesakit dalam pukul 6 hingga 7 petang. Tugas itu disambung oleh doktor on call. Maka andainya saya merupakan doktor on call (yang perlu menjaga seluruh hospital, bukan sekadar wadnya) pada hari tersebut, saya akan menyambung tugas saya dari pukul 7 malam itu hingga 7 malam keesokan harinya di wad dan klinik seperti biasa.

Maka, wahai pesakit hospital kerajaan Malaysia, renungkan dan fikirkanlah. Seandainya anda ternampak kami berbual, makan atau membaca surat khabar, sebenarnya kami hanya ingin 'mencuri' sesaat dalam 36 jam itu untuk merasai kehidupan manusia biasa.

DOKTOR HOSPITAL KERAJAAN

Kuala Lumpur






My Experience


I believed that most of doctors experienced such tiredness during our profession. For me myself, I had active on-call two to three times and passive on-call almost the rest of the days per week since our hospital being ran by three doctors only. Sometimes, we have to do every other day on-call for a week when one of our colleagues went for meeting, course or leave. (Alhamdulillah, our night call is not very busy all the times in district hospital)

The things became worse since outbreak of Chikungunya in our area for the past one month, where we received more than 10 new cases of Chikungunya per day and some of them need to be admitted. With lot of other patients in the ward - some of them are very sick and need referral to tertiary centre, plus long queue of patients waiting in Outpatient Department (OPD), sometimes we don’t have time to take our break, need to hold for an hour to go to toilet and cannot even take our lunch.

Sometimes I cried - not because lack of rest, but because I was sad and I’m afraid that I might not do the best to treat my patients due to my limited time and energy. I felt upset and stressful, and sometimes I became easily angry with my staffs. I felt disappointed that I was not given enough source and energy to provide the best service.


I am not complaining

I am not here to complain, but I want to visualize on how stressful is our work so that people can understand what is happening behind the ‘scene’. I was upset when some of the patient’s relative curse us with the words, “Dah mati semua agaknya doktor di hospital ni!” or “Aku nak langgar hospital ni dengan bulldozer!” because they need to wait for so long to be seen by doctor.

Whenever I feel like to complain about my tiredness and stress, I always remind that I’m doing this job for the sake of Allah. I also remember what our medical faculty dean, Professor Mazidah told us, before we decided to proceed with medicine course. She said, “If you want to be a doctor just to please your parents, just forget it. If you want to be a doctor to earn lot of money, just forget it because you will be paid with the amount that is not worth it with your workload. If you want to be a doctor because you think that you’ll be popular, forget it because people might not appreciate you.”

I keep her words inside my heart till now. Thank you Prof! It is very true…our work might no be appreciated, we might not received high salary compare to our hard time working but our love towards this job, our pleasure in giving relieve to the sick people and our faith that this is one of the way we find Allah’s bless - keep us here.


Motivating Thoughts


Here are few responds from few doctors to the “Luahan Rasa Doktor Yang Penat” above (which I copied from facebook) - very motivating thoughts I guess:

“I love my job..it's more of a calling to a higher good than just a mere profession. No thanks or appreciation in this life people & don't look for it or we'll all end up frustrated at the end of the day. For all our sacrifices and good work, look forward to a better afterlife.”

“Hey, I guess u must start to enjoy what you are doing. If u starts loving what you’re doing, I guess there will be no complaints.”

“Hey buddy, I know that you're tired, frustrated and probably fed up of it all...but let’s be assured that all of us have had our 36/48/60 hour shifts, and in the end it is only your love and passion for the job that keeps you in one piece, both physically and mentally. By the way, if you need to chat or have a snack or read a paper, do it behind closed doors, away from the public eye. That's what call rooms are for. Trust me; I learnt it the hard way.”




My Hope

To our higher level of administration in Ministry of Health, please help us to do the best in our service by providing us with more doctors especially in district area in Sarawak which is really lack of doctors.

To the public, please forgive us for our slow services which we never intend to do so. When we’re late, it is not because we're chatting inside the treatment room or having our ‘kopi panas’ and ‘roti canai’, but because we’re seeing other sick patients. Please understand us even though you don’t want to appreciate us. Please be cooperative with us, so we can help each others.

To my big hearted patients who appreciate my job with your thanks and gifts, I never expect such appreciation, but I want you to know that you make my day a better day and you inspire me to be more happy and energetic with your smile and thanks.

To all doctors around the world, let us give our best service regardless of appreciation and thanks. We serve because we do this job as an Ibadah to find Allah’s pleasure. We serve because we had made a promise to give the best for patients as stated in the hipocratic oath: To keep the good of the patient as the highest priority. We do this because we want to help patients so that Allah will help us in the day after.

O Allah...please forgive us…please help us…please bless us…Ameen…