Saturday, July 01, 2006

*ponders*

PRESS STATEMENT
ON
MEDICINE AS A CAREER

The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the students who achieved high scores in the recent examination. We would also like to encourage and welcome students who are interested in pursuing Medicine as a career. However, the comments made by the Honourable Minister of Health are very relevant and need to be seriously taken into consideration by these potential students.

Students often presume that being a doctor is a glamorous profession, lucrative safe in times of economic turmoil. The truth can be very different to this. Basic undergraduate medical education normally extends for a period of five to six years and postgraduate education takes another five years. The need to keep up with increasing medical knowledge and the latest medical technologies, the current development in the field of Medicine has made it mandatory now for doctors to attend meetings, courses and training continuously throughout their career to keep up-dated of current progresses. This on-going educational process is officially known as Continuing Professional Development (CPD) or previously known as Continuing Medical Education (CME).

A career in Medicine involves the care of the ill, infirm and injured. The practice of Medicine is a lifetime commitment to the study and delivery of health care. It involves dedication, sacrifice of personal and family time, constant pressure and answerable to various levels of administration in the hospital setting. A doctor's job though challenging and often satisfying is also physically and mentally taxing.

Therefore, the MMA wishes to highlight to students to look at their career options not from the monetary and glamour aspects but instead to view it more realistically and rationally.

"Being a good doctor means being incredibly compulsive. It has nothing to do with flights of intuition or brilliant diagnoses or even saving lives. It's dealing with a lot of people with chronic diseases that you really can't change or improve. You can help patients. You can make a difference in their lives, but you do that mostly by drudgery--day after day paying attention to details, seeing patient after patient and complaint after complaint, and being responsive on the phone when you don't feel like being responsive." -from M.D.-Doctors Talk About Themselves -
by John Pekkanen


BY : DATUK DR TEOH SIANG CHIN
PRESIDENT
MALAYSIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

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