Are young specialist doctors good enough to look after patients unsupervised? Being a doctor is unlike any other job in the world. This is as doctors are responsible for their patients’ lives. In other words, they have the biggest responsibility of all jobs. For those who choose to specialise in a particular medical field, their journey is different from that of general doctors. There is a certain road that specialists travel on and there is no shortcut to it. In order for specialists to be good enough at what they do, they need to work under the supervision of a senior specialist or a fully registered doctor for some time. However, not all specialists get the same routine; some of them have to be non-specialist on-call duty before being given the greenlight by the head of department to move ahead. Specialist doctors often have to wait a while before getting to do things on their own terms. Are they good enough to be left on their own to deal with patients? Will the hospitals be fine with only young doctors on duty? It is not a secret that the training these days for young doctors is different, as there are not enough training hospitals that can accommodate to the huge influx of young graduates. As a result, these young specialists do not get to have the appropriate amount of time to learn their job on the spot. Senior doctors vs young doctors It has often been noted by several senior doctors that the young doctors of today lack the responsibility and professionalism in carrying out their duties towards their patients. By hanging around the hospitals, it is not hard to see that the doctors, who are in charge of patients, look like they have only just graduated from medical schools. It is not just seen in their physical appearance, but also, in their behaviours and mentalities. When they do not know about what the patients are talking about, they easily choose to either use Google or step out of the room to ask another young doctor for help. Other options are to call a doctor friend or to look it up in a medical book. While these are all the right procedures, they should not be done in front of the patients. Taking charge of the situation It is only after they have been thoroughly supervised by a fully registered doctor and completed their housemanship that specialists’ doctors are left to practise on their own. When left alone by themselves, are they able to tackle the problems that their patients come to them with? No patient has the same problem, so how does a specialist deal with something new that is brought to them? No patient in pain looks forward to hearing, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you”. Most definitely, no patient would like to hear that from a young doctor as they would have assumed them to have graduated with the latest medical knowledge. Most patients look up to the doctors in front of them, as if they are their saviours and fixers. Since the patients have paid a higher price to see a specialist, they would like to get a solution for their problems as well, instead of an “I don’t know” or “Nothing can be done” from their doctors. The specialists are also in charge of the nurses attached to them, so they have to be in sync with their presentation towards the patients. No patient would want to have an immature doctor or an unprofessional nurse attending to them. A continuous learning process Being a doctor of any speciality brings with it a continuous learning process. To say that this much time or experience is needed so that young specialists qualify to be on their own is an understatement. Young specialists should mould themselves to be better before taking charge for their own benefit. They should be well-informed and mature in carrying out their duties. Compared to a decade ago, it is not that hard for young doctors today to know and learn about things on their own. It is not complicated to gain as much experience as they can in their line of duty. Should they have questions, they should not be afraid to seek the opinions and feedback of senior doctors. In their own time, they can learn more about their jobs through volunteering in their own community. To each his own At the end of a young specialist’s supervised journey, it is up to the specialist to understand how things work at a hospital and how to be the doctor that their patients can depend on. It is up to specialists to know what has to be done in order to do their job well. As medical officers, it is their duty to ensure that patients leave their rooms knowing that their problems have solutions. Being considered as the peoples’ health fixers, it is up to them to gain the required knowledge and experience before setting off on their own journeys in the hospital. Source
