Thousands of medical graduates across Malaysia waited with bated breath yesterday as they checked the results of their interview with the Public Service Commission (PSC) for the post of House Officer, otherwise known as housemen.
Every medical graduate has to undergo an interview by the PSC to be eligible to apply for housemanship. In March, The Deputy Health Minister Dato Seri Dr Hilmi Yahaya revealed that by December 2016, 3,474 medical graduates were interviewed, with 1,687 given placements in public hospitals. This leaves 1,787 waiting for their posting, in addition to the thousands more interviewed between January and March 2017.
Just 8 days ago, the PSC website published that interview results would be announced on the 17th of April 2017.
Amongst these medical students are many who have been waiting for over a year for a placement into public hospitals. However, when the day arrived, what greeted the medical graduates on the website was a disappointing notice stating that the announcement of the results had to be postponed to an unknown date, leaving thousands of housemen-to-be disappointed and frustrated.
Some have reported that even as late as 12.30 p.m. on the 17th of April (the date that the information should have been released), medical graduates were still receiving calls instructing for a re-submission of documents required to the PSC. It has been over a month since the last of these medical students underwent their interview. Why were these calls made only on the very day the PSC was supposed to announce the results?
The failure of the PSC to meet the deadline that they have not only set for themselves, but have already announced to the public, as well as last minute requests for re-submission of documents exposes how inefficient and under-prepared the public service commission is.
This long wait with no end in sight consigns these medical graduates to be stuck in a limbo, once again prolonging their wait to practice in clinics or hospitals. As the saying goes “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” Prolonging the housemanship posts of medical graduates will inevitably cause them to lose medical knowledge and skills that they have painstakingly acquired in medical school.
Besides that, how can the PSC expect people to plan their schedule around non-concrete and undependable dates of release? Many medical graduates require jobs and money and those who have chosen to work in the meantime are unable to sign long term contracts; while the majority are afraid to commit to and plan further activities as they might be called for service at short notice. What about those who have to repay their study loans?
What the PSC has done to our medical graduates has aggravated the dire situation they are already in. With nobody to replace the housemen who have been recently promoted to medical officers, the existing housemen are left with a higher workload, resulting in fatigue, and an increased risk of burnout and medical errors.
Many inches of newspaper column have been dedicated to castigate under-performing housemen, but how many of them were victims of long waits caused by the inefficiency of the PSC?