Shortage

What happens when people are continually leaving and no one new is coming? Yes, you said it. A negative balance and a reducing workforce. Since the workload is somewhat the same, if not more at some days, we are left with having to work a lot harder than previously, and thus leading being burnt out and perpetual exhaustion. In fact, I’m beginning to think that we’re working harder than the housemen (HOs), coz they are having more and more people and no one is leaving.

Maybe I should simplify the confusing paragraph above to enlighten those who are not in the medical field currenlty. Since housemanship has been extended to a 2 year long program since Jan 2008 onwards, from now until Jan 2010, there will be no HOs graduating to MOs. What this means is, the number of HOs will continue to increase, as there will always be new ones joining, while the rest can’t leave and be MOs until after they’ve complete their 2 years. On our side, MOs are leaving to the districts, to join the Master’s program, to become specialists, while no new MOs are being produced til Jan 2010. So it’s only obvious that there will be and currently is an acute shortage of MOs nationwide.

I think in Cindy’s department there is only 2 MOs running on EoD calls. As for my department, we no longer have our afternoon shift work and on-call relief system, which is fine for small and non-busy hospitals, but definitely torture for busy places like our shitholes. It has come to the stage that she takes more than a day to reply my SMS, and when she apologizes for the late reply, I realised that I did not even realise that she did not reply. Yes, we are that tired and exhausted.

Anyway, I don’t see a solution to this problem in the near future, at least not until Jan 2010, but I really don’t think I can last very long working like this.