Ever Wonder what Anesthetists really do?

Lyric

Everybody wonders what anaesthetists do
While the patient is asleep
Everybody wonders what we do for three hours
While the machine goes beep
Everybody reckons we drink coffee and we gossip and we’re generally subversive
Everybody reckons we do crosswords and Sudoku and we chat up all the nurses

But do you really think that’s all we do
Well let me tell you now isn’t true…

‘Cause we sometimes check the screen
And every now and then we write stuff
And if we have to intervene
We inject a bit of white stuff [propofol]
And we offer to alter the lights
Or the height of the bed
Or fiddle with the radio, change the CD
We even check the patient occasionally…
And if they move, we turn up the vapor,
And then we go back to reading the paper

‘Cause when the patient’s asleep
We just sit and listen to the beep
We just sit and listen to the…

Once upon a time I took pride in my job
But now I think it’s time to depart
‘Cause I just sit here everyday
And listen to bleeps of the heart

Training Timeline for Malaysian doctors

Here is Pekeliling (a PDF file in Bahasa Malaysia) dated 2002 in planning of education for medical graduates in Malaysia. There is a timeline on which departments that a houseman has to be trained in, plus the postings.

Well, talking about postings, those who start housemanship in Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL) or other university hospitals (UM, UKM, USM etc) are luckier than those who start housemanship elsewhere. For those who started elsewhere; by the 2nd year of graduate medical training, the posting will be so rural and it’ll be much harder for you to settle in, get married, have sex with husband/wife, have kids and not to mention an ambitious doctor’s worst nightmare; not being able to specialize!!

I’m not saying those in HKL and University Hospitals won’t get rural postings, but those who started housemanship there, fight to death to stay as the Senior Medical Officer at the exact same hospital. At least you can settle down (if not get married) and you’re ahead of your peers (who got rural posting) by 2-3 years for Masters Specialization program. Seriously, once stuck rural, you have to stay rural forever until someone offers you for Masters program (that’s only what I heard – needs checking for information accuracy)

That’s only how I interpreted the Pekeliling. I might be wrong. By the way, that thing was in 2002. Housemanship has been extended to 2 years by our beloved scandalous ex-minister of health, remember? Apparently, health admins think that young doctors nowadays are very incompetent, thus extend housemanship. But they never wanted to admit that they’re short of specialists and the route for medical specialization is so damn long! HOMOs (House Officers, Medical Officers) doing scutwork? Yeah, so much fun!

Blame the housemen or blame the system?