Intern

A recent hot topic amongst our colleagues during lunch is the quality of our house officers.

Oh, I mean the lack of quality of them.

The reason is simple: Most of the interns have already fixed up with an MO job. The last three months of internship is nothing but a pass time.

One of my friends is particularly furious (which I fully agree). He went so far to wrote two emails, one to our chairman and the other to us.

Here they are.

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Dear Chairmen,

I hope you could allow us to have more stringent disciplinary actions on our interns, particularly the last group of them who fail to execute their jobs in a professional way after securing their next jobs. While we have been accumulating tremendous tangible assets through publications, awards, grants, donations, new centers etc, we are also running the risk of losing intangible assets through tolerance to substandard practice. In the long run, this will undermine our medical school's reputation and professionalism.

XXX

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Dear all,

We set role models and develop culture for our students so that they can follow. This is how the tradition of professionalism can be perpetuated. Unfortunately, we do see a small minority of them, for various reasons, fail to practise professionally. And in most occasions, they are well aware of what they should do but they deliberately choose not to do.

If positive discipline through encouragement and acknowledgement doesn't work, I strongly support that they need to bear the consequence of what they have done. This implies deferral of internship, written warning and notification of future employers. We should also think of some forms of database or inquiry system of disciplinary / conduct problem in which their future employers, whether they are of private sector or HA, can get access with careful observation of privacy issues. Tolerance or negligence will lead to perpetuation of this malpractice and in the long run erode the creditability of our profession and our medical school.

XXX