Team

After revising the Wealth of Nations, I was about to conclude government expenditure on health care and education are two contrasting extremes of how the money could be spent.

Yes, I've probably gone too far. While still digesting this matter in my mind during the Saturday lunch, I met ML - a university classmate of mine who is now a consultant surgeon in another hospital. After a brief casual chat, our discussion inevitably came to the manpower issue.

"Are there a lot of trainees leaving in your department?" My friend asked.

"Quite so. We have lots of vacancies to fill in the coming July - and there aren't hardly enough applicants." I said.

"So are we," ML nodded.

"I hear that the extra-terrestrials may try to cut down the number of new recruitment in other departments so that more fresh graduates would have little choice but need to take up internal medicine." I uttered slowly.

"Don't be silly. That won't happen," he said, "Otherwise it would be catastrophic."

"You mean many of the fresh graduates would turn to the private market ?" I asked.

"More than that," my friend said grimly, "Let's think of it. You work in a large department of a hundred staff; a few people down would easily be tolerated - and sometimes not even noticed. But, many departments and specialties are operating as small teams - for example, my division has six doctors, team head to house officer included. If one of us resigned and there's no replacement, we do not only have to cut down the service - we could not find enough names to fill up the monthly call list !"