KUALA LUMPUR, May 22 — The Ministry of Health (MOH) has decided to open new house officer placements at “some” hospitals apart from state hospitals, due to improved filling of housemen slots.
This year’s third house officer appointment intake, expanded to district hospitals, was implemented in the e-housemen system last May 13, involving 792 candidates.
“Previously, the MOH decided earlier this year for placements to be reserved for state hospitals because of the declining appointments of house officers and reduced filling of housemen slots in state hospitals,” the MOH said in a statement today.
“Until April 2024, the MOH completed two new housemen appointment intakes involving 701 people in the first intake and 803 people in the second.
“For the subsequent appointment intakes, house officer placements in other hospitals will be considered from time to time, based on the number of candidates received from the Public Services Commission (SPA) and other related factors.”
The MOH added that 747 floating medical officers (MOs) who completed housemanship have been deployed to all states this month “to address the current shortage of medical officers.”
“The training of house officers during their placement is meant to give them sufficient exposure and clinical training,” said the MOH.
“The MOH has also instructed all hospital directors to protect the welfare of all health care workers, even as housemen appointment levels in hospitals are still under improvement.”
In a letter to CodeBlue, a doctor from a public hospital in the Klang Valley previously criticised the redeployment of house officers to district hospitals, pointing out that tertiary hospitals are major referral centres.
“If the manpower were to be equally divided or to omit university hospitals from the list of training hospitals – as suggested by a certain high-ranking official – this could seriously impair provision of subspecialty services and training of specialists, as the Master students would be forced to do more scut work, instead of acquiring specialist knowledge and skills,” the doctor wrote.
“The dwindling number of house officers (HOs) is just part of the problem. The mass resignation of medical officers is just as concerning, as they are running the majority of services currently.
“As the saying goes, a lack of HOs leads to lack of MOs, and a lack of MOs leads to lack of specialists in the future. Our health care system is indeed heading towards a titanic collision.”
