Doctoring in M’sia a bad investment: artist depicts MOs’ woes in cartoons

KUALA LUMPUR – An artist has put the Health Ministry’s disorganised and uncommunicative manner of handling doctors’ transfers into cartoons, drawing from his wife’s experience as a medical officer awaiting her placement at a hospital outside Kuala Lumpur.

The series of cartoons by artist Nixon Siow was shared by the Hartal Doktor Kontrak Facebook page.

Siow’s original post on his own page has had more than 4,400 shares as well as over 600 comments from many, including medical officers, sympathising with his wife’s story.

Siow begins his cartoon story by introducing himself as an artist and his wife as a “floating MO”, or medical officer, who has completed her housemanship and is waiting for the government to give a placement.

The couple, just married for less than a year, have been living in Kuala Lumpur and were finally told in the middle June that the wife would be posted to Perak in a month’s time. 

She was also told to report herself for duty on July 18.

“But report where? We don’t know? Wanna rent a house also cannot,” writes Siow in one of the cartoons.

The rest of the cartoon details how he and his wife scrambled around with little information to help them make decisions on relocating. 

Even on the day his wife reported for duty, she was still not told which hospital she will be sent to. A day later, when she is given her confirmation letter to go to Ipoh Hospital, no start date is included.

Explaining his reasons for illustrating the couple’s ordeal, Siow touched on the personal cost of his wife’s placement and how it affected his own business and income because he chose to follow her to Ipoh.

He acknowledged that many MOs take up their placements alone and without family support.

“Being a doctor in Malaysia is a bad investment. Do you know how many MOs are experiencing the same situation as us, and maybe worse?

“Do you know how many doctors have resigned because of placement? Malaysia keeps losing talents,” he wrote. 

Hartal Doktor Kontrak began as a social media movement last year to organise strikes by MOs in hospitals throughout the country.

Since then, the movement has kept up pressure on the Health Ministry to improve working conditions, benefits, and career pathways for MOs, many of whom have quit the profession because of the lack of job security despite Malaysia’s need for doctors and specialists.

In June, Health Ministry Khairy Jamaluddin announced more perks for housemen.

Prior to that in February, he said the government would address the lack of job security for MOs by creating more than 4,000 additional permanent posts from June onwards. – The Vibes, August 14, 2022