02 September 2012 | last updated at 11:12PM

A DOCTOR at a local public hospital recalls her medical school lecturer forewarning his charges about the challenges they would face when doing their housemanship. Housemen, he said, were like the "scum" of the department and in the organisational chart of the hospital, they would rank way below the amah (hospital orderly or attendant). These were certainly not the most encouraging of words to dish out to future doctors, but perhaps he was trying to prepare them for the real world of medical house officers.

For a long time now, housemen have always been viewed as an overworked and underpaid lot. They slogged for hours on end, especially when they were on call (sometimes up to 40 hours at a stretch), almost every other day, foregoing sleep and proper meals.

Coupled with that, there was the added pressure of having to deal with demanding superiors, difficult patients and even domineering ancillary staff. Little wonder that many a stressed and burnt-out houseman had gone into depression or called it quits after five long years in medical school.

To put things right, the Health Ministry introduced the new flexi-hour shift system last year in place of the on-call system to give these overworked housemen a breather. Many have hailed it as long overdue, but one year on, the question that is being asked is: are our housemen being given a better life at the expense of experience?

While they may now enjoy a better quality of life with the flexi-hour shift system, the limited number of hours spent on clinical work and their inadequate exposure to various disciplines of medicine will ultimately affect the quality healthcare that the country is aiming for.

Stories about inept housemen and their lack of knowledge, as related by senior doctors, are quite appalling. Some are said to be clueless on how to read a patient's blood pressure, let alone insert an intravenous line. To be fair, with medical schools churning out graduates by the thousands each year and with only 37 training hospitals to accommodate them, these housemen cannot be expected to get the thorough clinical work experience their predecessors benefited from.

But all is not lost if these housemen are passionate about their calling and abide by the Hippocratic Oath of continuing "with diligence to keep abreast of advances in medicine" by engaging in continuous professional development. For as long as housemen have no interest in what goes on beyond their "training hours", it will be a loss, not just for the medical profession, but for all Malaysians.

Continued here:

Mediocre or professional?