HOUSEMANSHIP TRAINING SINCE 1990s

I will divide this section into 3 sub-sections, explaining what has been happening since 1990s in housemanship training.



1a) Before 2000

before 2000, the housemanship training use to have 4 monthly rotations in Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Medicine or Paediatric and Surgery or Orthopaedic. After the 1 year training, you will be transferred to rural or semirural areas to serve in district hospitals or Klinik Kesihatans (KK) (health clinics). Most of the time, these rural postings are a wonderful experience but a little bit scary due to lack of senior people to consult or assist you.

One of the major faults in this system is the fact that if you do Medicine, you will miss Paediatric and if you do Surgery, you will miss Ortho. Only O&G was made compulsory. Thus, the government felt it was inadequate. Many will go to KK and District Hospitals without doing Paediatrics/Medicine and Orthopaedics/Surgery. A lot of the time, you need to depend on the senior nurses or Medical Assistants (MA). I must say that during that time, the nurses and MAs were excellent. They were second to doctors, not to be compared with the current generation of nurses and MAs.

BTW, just to mention, the HO’s take home salary before 2000 use to be RM 1648!! Pathetic isn’t it? You won’t even be able to buy a car/house. The car loan interest rate than was 6-8%! You will get RM 20 for each on-call that you do! This “On Call” allowance was only introduced in 1994. Prior to that, you are not paid a single cent for your “On-Calls”, free labour for the government mah……………..

1b)  After 2000

Around the year 2000-2002, a new posting known as junior medical officer postings was introduced after housemanship. This is also known as the 4^th and 5^th HO posting. It was 3 month posting in either medicine/paediatric or surgery/ortho depending on which that you did not do during the 1 year housmanship as above. After completing the 4^th and 5^th postings, you will be posted to rural or district as a Medical Officer.

1c)  Since 2008

Since 2008, housemanship training has been extended to 2 years. This means you will be completing all the major postings before being transferred out.