The plight of contract doctors

A movement for Malaysian doctors to go on strike has been gaining traction. It is the culmination of a long standing issue that junior doctors are being offered poorer employment terms than their peers for their work in public hospitals.

According to the Health Minister as of May 21, there were 35,216 contract doctors comprising 23,077 medical officers, 5,000 dental officers and 7,139 pharmacists.

On this special addition of the Health and Wellness Show, we discuss the issue surrounding contract doctors including:

• What are the terms they operate under
• The impact on individual doctors from a financial, career, mental wellness, physical standpoint
• Challenges within the public healthcare system with regards to workload, competency and meritocracy
• Issue of the possible deficiency of specialists in the future
• Possible solutions to the problems and also examine how the UK’s NHS system may give us some guidance as to the steps to take to solve some of the problems facing the system in Malaysia

Guests: Dr. Sentilnathan Subramaniam – Vice Chairman, Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) and its section for housemen and medical officers (Schomos), Dr. Selina Chew, Founder of Medic Footprints Malaysia and Dr. Bessima Jamal, Formerly a contract doctor in the Government Service

Host: Brian Fernandez