WHEN it comes to the country’s public healthcare services, it is perhaps only fair to say that the underlying problems have been there all this while.
However, the matter took on a whole new dimension with the rise of the Hartal Doktor Kontrak movement in mid-2021, which was itself triggered by strains left behind by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, the plight faced by doctors, nurses and others working under the country’s public healthcare service has been very much in the news with countless healthcare practitioners bemoaning their less-than-satisfactory working conditions and terms of services.
For context, public healthcare – also known internationally as universal healthcare – is a service provided all over the world, with the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) being the most well-known (although not always for the right reasons).
Recently, a CodeBlue’s survey titled “Dissatisfaction Among Health Care Professionals and Workers in Malaysia’s Health Service” – which had sought to identify if government health care workers were frustrated at work and what kind of workplace issues they faced – had blown the issue wide open.
According to the survey, a whopping 95% of 1,652 respondents – held exclusively among government health care workers across every state and federal territory in the country this month – believed that Malaysia’s public health care system is currently in “crisis”.
The survey revealed that 73% of respondents (1,205 people) said they’re thinking about quitting the government health service.
Over half (52%) said they would take part in a strike if one was organised for public health care workers (867 people), while a third (34%) expressed uncertainty about their participation (557 people).
On a scale of zero (“not angry”) to four (“furious”), more than half (53%) of respondents said they are “furious” – the highest level of anger – at the existing situation in the public health care system.
More than a quarter (27%) are “very angry”, while 13% are “angry”. Only 2% said they are not angry.
Meanwhile, a whopping 83% (1,365 people) feel the government isn’t serious about addressing issues in the public health care system, while about eight in 10 respondents said they are overworked and underpaid.
Nearly three-fourths (74%) said they’re burned out, and six in 10 expressed insecurity about their career progression.
Interestingly, CodeBlue revealed that almost two-thirds of those who participated in the survey were medical officers (64%), followed by graduate medical officers (11%), medical specialists (8%), pharmacy officers (8%), medical officers subspecialists (3%), assistant medical officers (2%), dental officers (2%) and nurses (1%).
Most of those involved are also those who serve in Ministry of Health (KKM) hospitals, which is 77%, while 16% in health clinics and another 5% in teaching hospitals.
So what does this mean for the Malaysian healthcare service? – Feb 7, 2023
Main pic credit: Getty Images
