ADUN SPEAKS | Humanity must prevail in public hospitals
ADUN SPEAKS | The Health Ministry (MOH) has finally established the Health Work Culture Improvement Task Force (HWCITF) task force to examine the recent death of a houseman at the Penang General Hospital in particular and the work culture of public hospitals in general.
The HWCITF, headed by a former civil servant, consists of eight members tasked with investigating the work culture in public hospitals and recommending changes to be adopted by the MOH.
This was announced by Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin yesterday.
The minister hoped the investigation would chart the way for the harmonious relationship among the staff in public hospitals.
While I welcome Khairy's decision to establish this long overdue task force, I am not certain it would be able to...
ADUN SPEAKS | The Health Ministry (MOH) has finally established the Health Work Culture Improvement Task Force (HWCITF) task force to examine the recent death of a houseman at the Penang General Hospital in particular and the work culture of public hospitals in general.
The HWCITF, headed by a former civil servant, consists of eight members tasked with investigating the work culture in public hospitals and recommending changes to be adopted by the MOH.
This was announced by Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin yesterday.
The minister hoped the investigation would chart the way for the harmonious relationship among the staff in public hospitals.
While I welcome Khairy's decision to establish this long overdue task force, I am not certain it would be able to put an end to the debilitating work culture in hospitals that is the prime source of bullying and other forms of torment against young trainee doctors.
I am not sure whether the task force will have the necessary expertise to look deeply into the work culture, a culture that emanates from the nature of the embedded hierarchy in hospitals.
Bullying is not something accidental or an aberration but is very much part and parcel of a work culture that is based on hierarchy and power relationships.
Stamping out bullying means, among other things, taking the rather painful step to democratise the hospitals where young doctors can have a say, whether in the form of complaints or providing the necessary feedback on the overall performance of hospitals.
If the task force fails to dismantle the hierarchical culture that is the source of bullying, then the task force would have failed miserably.
Task force should not take the easy way out
It was found that in some aircraft crashes, the fault was not the engines or the captains but the subordinate work culture in the cockpits, where there was hardly any communication between the captains and the junior pilots.
Unlike planes, public hospitals might not "crash", but the non-elimination of bullying might be a great disservice to the public and a blot on the noble medical profession.
The task force should not take the easy way out of the present imbroglio in government hospitals.
The ultimate question is about the management of human resources in the larger interest of the public.
A colossal amount of public funds is spent on building and maintaining hospitals.
The task force should not allow senior doctors to hold hospitals and the general public to ransom by engaging in the most offensive and unethical forms of treating young trainee doctors.
If there is a necessity for heads to roll, then this inexorable process must be allowed to take its logical course.
Hopefully, the task force succeeds in its endeavour to clean up and disinfect the hospitals of "monsters" operating in the guise of senior doctors.
Let justice and democracy prevail.
Let sanity and humanity be the basis of the governance of public hospitals.
P RAMASAMY is Perai assemblyperson and Penang deputy chief minister II.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
