Think before you speak

Did you know that more than 80% of health care in PNG is provided by health workers other than doctors? These workers include CHW's (community health workers) formely known as aid post ordelies, Nursing staff, HEO's (health extension officers) which are known as paramedics in other countries, Village birth attendents, etc.

This group of people provide the driving force behind the rural health services in this country. These people are still there when doctors go home to sleep (mind you, it does help that in hospitals, nurses have 8 hour shifts, compared to 24hours on duty if you are a doctor).

I have noticed many a time that they are not given the respect they deserve by the public. Take urban clinics and outpatient departments, for example. They are harrassed by people wanting to be seen quickly and people complain how slow these health workers are. If these same people take the time to observe their surroundings, perhaps they will notice that the ratio of patients to health staff maybe (on a busy day) 300+ patients : 2-3 health workers. Then try and apply this ratio to another profession, say education, perhaps. 300+ students to 2 - 3 teachers means roughly 100 students per teacher in one classroom per day. Outrageous isn't it? Consider for a moment what this ratio means to your own profession. Treating 300+ people can wear the smile off anyone's face when you're constantly harassed along the way.

So, next time you require medical attention, STOP, take a step back and observe the situation in the clinic you attend before you fire verbal abuse at the health workers there.

Government Spending Priorities - Where your hard earned tax dollars are going to.

If you happened to notice the front page of the national newspaper today, you would have seen the new jet Air Nuigini brought into the country which is going to be leased by the National Government to ferry the selected few on government business.

Well, last week we read about the budjet break up and i noticed that health on a whole had recieved a substantial amount broken up between the health department, hospital spending, etc. Although i am glad the funding has improved, i noted with some trepidation that the budjet was done with an estimated cash flow from the LNG project included in in.. It remains to be seen whether the health department will recieve the total intended budjet.

Amazing how the government saw fit to hire a jet, spending millions of kina on a small minority while the rest of the nation has to rely on a budjet that includes a project that has not fully kicked off the ground.. I am not an economist but i would suggest we not count our chickens before they have hatched..

Something to think about...

There is such a thing as an unemployed doctor

So, you shocked by the title? Well, it's true... I used to be one. After residency, you have to apply for service registry.. in other words, you serve the people.. Being naive, i applied for positions at one hospital alone which was way back in late december last year.. I just found out a few weeks ago that my applications were all unsucessful...

What happened? I have no idea but I now know that I should have applied everywhere even if most hospitals are not advertising grade 10 postions (the lowest service registry grading you have to start at).. So i am hitting the paper trail.. I plan on writing to every public hospital i can think of.. somewhere out there, someone needs a doctor..

In the meantime, working in private health care pays the bills plus i get to practice medicine and improve my people skills... Smile now :)

Cholera in PNG

Okay, you've heard a million things about the cholera outbreak in PNG and I'm not going to bore you, this is just a little anecdote which i plan on using many times over in the future.

I treated a foreigner in the practice who was only visiting PNG and was asked which vaccines were necessary for travel to PNG in the future.. As a GP had given this foreigner the advise to get immunisation against cholera, i was asked whether it was necessary or not...

Well,drawing on the infectious disease lectures given to me at medical school and my two years of internship, i wisely said that we had never had any suspected cases of cholera in PNG since the 1960's and none reported in the PNG Medical Journal.. I suggested that it might be a good idea to get immunisation however the risk was extremely low..

A week after i had this conversation, the front headline of both the Post Courier and the National announced the first cases of cholera in PNG, right in the province i was working in.

You can pick the moral of the story...

First blog post EVER!!!

Yeah, so i'm new to the whole blogging thing,kinda expected seeing the job i do for a living.. I am currently in the business of health care.

Where i come from, people in remote areas do not have access to basic health care services, pretty sad considering we are one of the richest countries in terms of natural resources. If you read our national newspapers, POST COURIER and the NATIONAL NEWSPAPER people complaining about lack of services jostle for headline space with reports of new gas fields found and the new multimillion kina LNG project. These newspapers also sometimes report on the shortage of medical staff in the country, a point which many people think is due to the fact that doctors do not want to go to rural areas.

I thought i'd start a blog to show you the other side of the story, what it's like for those of us in the medical profession when faced with such criticisms.This is also documents my journey to finding a job after internship, and the uniquely Papua New Guinean way.. So thanks for reading, and hope you stick around for the journey