My Experience Working as a Medical Student in Selayang Hospital, Malaysia

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My decision to do elective in my country, Malaysia during last summer is indeed a wise choice. In addition, I need to go back to Malaysian to serve the government for ten years after I graduated. This elective has opened my eyes and give me a flavour about Malaysia’s health system in general and what to expect about the local working environment.

Aims

The main aim of the elective is to find the differences between Malaysia’s and British health systems particularly in terms of public health, patient education, health staff, health service that could be offered to the multicultural population both in the urban and rural area. Besides, it is pertinent for me to talk to the local patients and health staff to get firsthand feedback and experience about Malaysia’s health system in general.

Background info of Selayang Hospital

My medical elective in Selayang Hospital, Malaysia for a month was an unforgettable moment. As an introduction, this new modern government hospital which has 20 clinical disciplines provides 960 inpatient beds and the services are mainly consisted of secondary and selected tertiary care. More importantly, Selayang Hospital has world class standards facilities and has become the first hospital in Malaysia to fully operate using computers under a system called T.H.I.S (Total Hospital Information Hospital). As it is completely computerized, no papers or films are used to record patient’s document and progress.

My medical field of interest in this elective is to join with the Emergency Department (ED) team. The triage system is similar to the hospitals in the UK which consists of three groups- non critical, semi-critical and critical cases. I had a lot of opportunities to mainly discover more about the ...

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... to locate the lesion before he could be transferred to HKL for operation. After a long discussion, HKL did not want to accept this case as they believe the prognosis was very poor. However, on the other hand, Selayang Hospital team still believed that the patient could be saved and they had done everything they could to stabilize him.

There were a slight emotional distress, frustration and regret among the team when the decision was made. Because of the decision, they had no choice, but only to stop giving blood transfusions to prevent resources from being wasted. Central line was also been removed. However, patient’s care had still been continued in surgical ward. The team tried to let the patient to die as ease and natural as possible. They lacked of manpower to save one’s life. From this case, I managed to observe the care and management of the ‘last house’.

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