Residency, Ageism and Me (Yes it's always about me)

So the first batch of Duke medical students will be graduating this weekend. Congrats wor.

Totally unrelated, I was ignored when I asked for free tickets (offered on Twitter) to Zouk this Saturday. Dr Og just asked for fun la (my principle, anything free just ki chew first) and really given my age, lack of vitality and that I will be cheonging at Shanghai Dolly ( sorry I cheena one) on Friday, it is unlikely I will be able to survive Zouk on a Sat night.

While I did suffer some narcissistic injury when the fellow twitter did not offer me the free tix ( and worse ar never follow me on twitter), I also knew that my time in Zouk is (long) over. This has nothing to do with ageism. Do you see ah peks running hundred metre sprint?

Its not just the young ones who get to enjoy everything! There are also other stuff whereby being older works in your favour. The older folks have seats choped for them in MRTs and buses, can scold you if you take their seats and Stomp you until you apologize! They can also get senior citizen prices for movie tix. No wonder all the ah peks gather at Yangtze.

What Dr Og is saying is that whatever your age is there is a right place for you... I used to cheong Zouk but now I reminisce and spent Saturday resting. One day it will be my turn to be hanging around Yangtze getting cheap tix to 肉脯团19 but until then I stick to bit torrent.

So what do you do when you have people who are older than Consultants (hopefully not Senior Cons) graduate and needing to do housemanship meant for young Drs? They invented the Residency.

Ok, not exactly invent coz this one is basically copy cat the US of A. As these graduates are older, they cannot be put through the same vigorous training that Drs since the time of modern medical training started in Singapore have been put through. They will die! Like if I go Zouk on Saturday. They need to rest. So, less patients for them in clinics and even if they do night calls they cannot see more patients than the no. of fingers they can count on one hand. (Hopefully dun get one so old cannot even count fingers la).

This is all very good coz they can now continue to study very hard for their postgrad, publish sibei cheem and solid papers in renowned journals (as depicted in the newspaper article) and do all the things that Dr Og and the doctors of his time were not able to do coz we sloughing away seeing patients. I was told I may soon need to vacate my clinic slot to make way for the residents. I will also need to supervise them even though I am not appointed as a faculty member and will not be getting any head count for the work. Plus I will need to see the cases which traditionally can be managed by junior Drs since now we must protect their workload. The patients will have to pay to see a consultant even if they do not need that level of care.

When the residents become specialist themselves they will discover that they never received an essential training which we oldies have mastered to survive public healthcare, the art of seeing many many patients at one setting...But it's really all ok, since they who have invented the residency have a ready backup in the form of FTs where the supply of Drs is seemingly endless.

Tags: Residency, Medicine, Singapore