We were all shaken by the brutal rape and murder of Dr Moumita Debnath in Kolkata, India, last August 9.
The 31-year-old trainee doctor’s half-naked body, bearing extensive injuries, was discovered after she fell asleep in a seminar room at RG Kar Medical College, one of India’s oldest hospitals, following a gruelling 36-hour shift.
How many of us among female doctors in Malaysia actually feel safe going to work, especially when we are on-call?
Many cases in Malaysia go underreported as they are silenced by higher authorities, especially hospital administrators. Many complaints are also taken lightly as we don’t have a strong union to back us up.
I am a doctor with 12 years service in the government and have worked in Kuala Lumpur Hospital (HKL) for more than half my tenure. During my time in HKL, I worked as a medical officer.
Currently, I am working as a specialist doctor at another public hospital in the Klang Valley.
My observations in this letter relate to HKL.
HKL is deemed to be the best hospital in the country, being one of the busiest, if not the busiest, tertiary centres. HKL also acts as both a specialist and subspecialty training centre.
It is daunting that HKL doesn’t have proper on-call rooms for doctors.
We often had to go the parking lot to get one to two hours of rest or sleep during a busy 36-hour shift. Many of us had no proper resting place in hospitals, forcing us to use our cars to rest during pre-call or post-call period, as well to rest before hitting the road.
Sometimes, the on-call rooms provided were either far or not enough to accomodate the number of on-call doctors per day, or they require sharing with many doctors. Not to mention that the parking lot was also insanely far from our department. However, to avoid other inconveniences, we often had to resort to this measure.
We have had rape or sexual assault cases involving female health care workers that went unreported. We also have had a good share of vandalism and robbery against doctors or other health care workers, especially in the parking lot as the general public knows the location of staff parking.
Whenever a complaint was made, it was often disregarded by blaming us for not taking preventive action. Not enough CCTVs were installed, especially in the blindspots. There were no designated guards in the parking lots, while auxiliary police assigned to guard specific areas are often missing at the wee hours of the morning.
Staff in the parking lot were more interested to tow the cars for illegal parking, as no proper allocation of parking lots was assigned to on-call doctors.
When will safety measures in Malaysian public hospitals cater for health care workers, especially women? Are we waiting for a similar heinous crime as the Kolkata doctor rape and murder to happen in our country before taking action?
When will the Ministry of Health (MOH) prioritise the wellbeing of doctors and health care workers instead of milking us for our services rendered with meagre pay?
We are still working 36-hour shifts with no post-call off for many of the departments in my hospital, which applies to most government hospitals.
Many accidents have occurred, with loss of lives related to long shift hours. Yet, the wellbeing of doctors and other health care workers often takes a back seat when it comes to policymaking.
I may have written mostly about HKL in this article, but doctors working in most major public hospitals in Malaysia face the same problems.
Our infrastructures are designed to be conducive for patients, but not for health care workers.
The author is a specialist doctor from a public hospital in the Klang Valley.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
