Malaysian doctor ‘turns accident victim away’ as choked hospitals take toll on health workers, patients
- Case of a doctor who allegedly told a patient he was ‘too tired’ to attend to him highlights impact of Malaysia’s stretched healthcare system on both health workers and patients
- Government is seeking to recruit 5,000 new professionals, improve hospital operations as doctors slam ‘ridiculously inhumane’ working conditions in public healthcare
Photos of a packed emergency room at the 153-year-old Kuala Lumpur Hospital recently circulated on social media, showing some patients holding on to their own IV bags, with others sitting on the hospital floor waiting to be admitted. The local Star newspaper described the situation as “a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie”.
Twitter user Syafiq Unzir on January 17 shared that his nephew, who had been involved in a traffic accident, was told by a hospital in rural Kelantan to go home because it was out of beds, and the one in the state capital was also full.
Syafiq added that his family’s concern over the boy’s condition was further dismissed by the attending doctor, who allegedly told them that he was tired and had many more patients to look at.
“‘I am busy’ … (this was) the word that came from a qualified doctor,” said Syafiq, whose post has been viewed by more than 2 million users.
While the Malaysian public have been aghast over these incidents, many are equally sympathetic to the plight of medical workers experiencing burnout after working through the coronavirus pandemic. The outbreak had exacerbated chronic staffing woes and long-standing bureaucratic issues, and many continued facing job insecurity as contract workers as the government refused to place them on permanent contracts.
The pressures drove many doctors to leave public healthcare to work in the more lucrative private sector, with some accepting positions abroad.
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Former health minister Khairy Jamaluddin revealed in parliament last year that more than 3,000 doctors had left the public sector between 2017 and 2021.
One such doctor, who penned an open letter about leaving, said he no longer wished for his altruism and empathy to be exploited by working conditions he described as “ridiculously inhumane”.
“My colleagues and I are working past the point of sanity to treat our patients to the best of our abilities, but the government has time and again failed to support us in this endeavour,” said Leonard Goh, who now works as a locum doctor.
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Noting these cases of burnout among doctors, Health Minister Zaliha Mustafa, who was appointed in November, called for improvements to the healthcare sector that will help it run more efficiently, even as the country is set to hire more than 5,000 new health workers this year.
These include installing short-stay wards at hospitals that do not yet have one, improving bed management, and having leaner operations at hospitals.
Healthcare experts, such as former deputy health ministry director general Christopher Lee, said that while some of these measures had been implemented before, the onus was on hospital executives to have hands-on involvement in addressing the welfare of both patients and staff.
“Good people management is key in balancing training and service needs. Work culture is set by leaders,” Lee said.
This view was echoed by Heric Corray, who led the country’s largest hospital with 2,300 beds in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hospital bosses need to meet patients and staff and see the challenges they face, according to Corray, the former director of Kuala Lumpur Hospital. “No one should sit on their high chairs and take actions merely on what is conveyed by subordinates.”
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Not everyone is convinced by the plan, with Hartal Doktor Kontrak, a coalition pushing for the proper hiring of doctors and nurses, saying that such ideas are already in place.
“Patients are coming in nonstop. Overcrowded. Doctors? Obviously not enough,” the group said.
It added that the sheer number of patients led to doctors running out of empathy, leaving “patients reduced to just another card that needs to be settled quickly (and) not a sick human”.
The group had previously called for an unprecedented strike across 20 hospitals nationwide for one hour in July 2021 to raise concern over their predicament.
