The Ministry of Health must launch a immediate and transparent investigation into the tragic “death” of a Houseman at Penang Hospital as well as prepare the necessary support including emotional and psychological support to all healthcare workers including Housemans to ensure such incidents do not happen again.
What is concerning is that this is believed to be the second death to involve a junior doctor in the span of two years. On top of that there are reported tough and toxic working conditions for these young doctors up to 16 to 17 hours a day affecting not just their physical health but also mental health.
Several doctors, who preferred to remain anonymous, said bullying in the medical fraternity is a pervasive problem.
That is why the Hospital Management must take responsibility and Ministry of Health must provide a clear explanation and conduct a transparent investigation into the matter to ensure any toxic practices against any of our healthcare workers are curbed. This cannot be dismissed as a “common practice or culture” and just be swept under the carpet.
I call upon the government and the Ministry of Health to implement a strict zero horizontal violence policy in all wotkplace to curb any toxic environment and even violence among all healthcare workers. This of course includes psychological violence, verbal violence and physical violence during interpersonal conflicts or conflicts among colleagues.
Horizontal violence has negative psychological and physical effects on the health of our healthcare professionals. It often does not directly attack the person physically, but indirectly puts victims in a state of high level stress, leading to stress-related disorders and injuries.
Physiologically, repeated exposure to stressors depletes the body’s defense system and increases the risk of heart disease, hypertension, sleep disorders and other adverse reactions to stress .
Psychologically, victims of horizontal violence generally have a low level of mental health, and horizontal violence may cause obvious psychological symptoms, such as anxiety, depression and feeling of stress.
All these will directly have an impact towards patient care. Studies has shown that occurrence of horizontal violence would make the healthcare workers feel painful, their attention and judgment would be disturbed, and the communication and collaboration among staffs would be reduced, which would eventually damage patient care.
That is why this issue must not be treated as an isolated case but looked at seriously not only on a local level in Penang, but also a macro-level nationwide.
On top of providing a more positive learning environment, MOH must look at providing a safe avenue to seek for help. In many cases, there is no clear channels for victims to voice out, by the time they do, it’s too late
This is one of the reasons why young doctors, nurses Assistant Medical Officers, pharmacist and other healthcare workers are leaving the public healthcare service due to such toxicity. If not addressed properly we will lose our young healthcare professionals which will the affect our quality of care to our people.
This is not how we want to treat our young doctors who were also part of main frontliners in our battle against Covid-19.
Proper support and guidance are given to all for them so that they can be moulded and trained positively to be the best they can be in their position.