Another question

Following from the post, BMA launched, there was a discussion on why choosing a new leader is important now.

One reason is Mr R. We also want to know what is the situation of the OMF “locum” surgeon who is also earning a lot of money in Manila. What is so special about him? Does the ADMIN owe him favours? It couldn’t be as most of them are new.  None of those who recruited him seem to be here anymore and yet we are still employing him. If he can get an M21 salary with M allowance and still work half the time NOT treating Bruneians, why can’t we the local doctors do the same. We will not dwell into rumours of what he has done in the Brunei but what we have mentioned seems to be fact. Hopefully the BMB with new board members can look into this.

Maybe the BMA can help, but we definitely need a new president first because he was employed during his era.

BMA launched

The BMA was launched on Sunday by the minister of health. At long last we have an independant organisation to look into the welfare of doctors in Brunei. There are a few things that need to be fixed, to quote the minister in Brunei Times “Healthcare services in ‘dire need of help’”. We hope that apart from the questions posed by the minister on Sunday, BMA can also question some decisions of the ministry. Such discussions should be two ways.

Some of us were hoping for an election of new office bearers but this did not happen. Maybe due to lack of suitable candidates. It should be easy to find someone to lead us. We have the new VC who could lead. We could also name a few guys in RIPAS who would be suitable for the job. So please give us an election, we would vote wisely of course to choose who will lead the BMA.

Changes

We have not posted anything in the past 2 months, not because of reasons circulating around. We wanted to wait and see if there are any changes during this time. We felt that this comment raises a few important issues. There were lots of replies to the comments so best if we discussed this further here.

By brucelee
As the new DGMS has taken over, we want to bring to her office’s attention the nepotism practice by the previous inefficient administrator. By the way, we are all elated to see the back of ex DGMS!
The first issue we want to bring up is the way the postgraduate committee was formed. The committee members were chosen by the ex DGMS and consist of his cronies who are mainly interested in promoting themselves.
They did not do anything to expedite the promotions of other local doctors nor do they provide assistance with our training. To clarify our statement, how come one of its members has been promoted to M19 without having undergone proper training herself?
We know for a fact she went to Singapore as a fellow, did not register herself for specialist training and did not do on calls and rotations while there. She spent her time outside Singapore attending overseas meetings.
Why is she being considered as a Senior Specialist in Brunei when she would only be considered as an associate Specialist in Singapore?? This has happened because she has promoted her substandard qualification despite not having enough experience. We hope the new administration will not do the same mistake and all these people have to be promoted only by local assessments after a few years of experience.
Now, who is she to decide on our future training (us junior doctors) when she herself did not undergo proper postgraduate training? We refuse to have her in the postgraduate committee to decide on our training.
We want to talk about the other member who is the right hand person for our old administrator. She calls herself the coordinator. She is the one who reluctantly returned to Brunei after decades of overseas stay spending government’s money. She never worked in Brunei as a junior doctor and she too is involved in deciding our future? Let the senior doctors who have spent their time in Brunei decide!
She spends more of her time at Ministry and UBD than RIPAS, where she is supposed to look after her patients. Now she is bringing the new scheme for assessment of junior doctors’ training. It’s high time we form a committee to assess his ex cronies who spend their time to promote themselves and decide on our lives. Let us now have 360 degrees assessment on all these cronies.
The second issue is the recent spate of promotions given to ex DGMS’s cronies which was secretly organised as he probably knew he was on the way out! We don’t know whether the 3 month trained Specialist has been promoted too? We are certain she was included, appointment via pillow talk.
It’s time we revamp the present system and postgraduate training committee. Promotions should be given on merits and everyone should have equal opportunities.
We are pleased to have Dr Hjh Norlila as our new DGMS. We hope she will get rid of all these favoritism practice.

Some of points it raises are:

• There is a new DGMS
• Another assessment on how some people can get promoted without proper training.
• How powerful a favourite can become, especially if the boss relies to much on them.
• A lot of decisions we made by one group of people with their own agendas.

To follow our own advice on the last point, please give us your comment on this.

How much do you value your life?

Certainly more than $25.

We heard the heroic efforts of the medical teams on the field, overcoming the crowd and obstacles, including the arm of the law, to get to the injured. Well done to them and all those involved. We hope that there will not be a repeat of this.

Condolences to the families.

Locum

Remember back in the day when we had locums to fill in for doctors so that the service is not interrupted and junior doctors study time is not affected.
What are locums? Locum, short for the Latin phrase locum tenens (place-holder), is a person who temporarily fulfils the duties of another. There are on average 3500 locum doctors working in the NHS, many are supplied by private agencies.
In Brunei, there are no similar locum system. The ministry does not have a group of locum doctors to call on. Once in a whle we do get daily paid doctors far a few months to locum but we are not too sure of the real arrangement with the ministry.
Most times, the remaining doctors will have to pick up the slack and work extra on-calls, do extra clinics or be short-handed at clinics.
In private practice, some of us heard that private clinics employ locums from outside the country to work there when they go on holidays. We also heard a story whereby some of our seniors tried to locum for private clinics but it was not allowed due to the general order.
Do we need locums in Brunei? Will you do locums as a means to increase the take home pay? Let’s discuss this.

Next post will be on doctors doing private practice on the side. So keep those comments coming.