So what comes next after housemanship? Mandatory service it is. I have been cluelessly promoted to medical officer. A transition that comes with no guide or induction session. Everyone is expected to know what to do from what you observe your MO doing as a houseman. Besides that, I am glad that finally my chop is useful to a certain extend and I do not need to bring that many pens to work.

Around two months prior to finishing housemanship, we were requested to submit our documents to the medical council in order for them to process our full registration. It takes around a month for mine to be approved and varies with individuals. 

So what to do? First, you will need to logon to https://meritsmmc.moh.gov.my/ and register. After registering, you will need to create a new application for full registration and fill in all the necessary information such as graduation date and postings done (just need to list up to the fifth posting). 

There will be a list of documents to be submitted as follow:

If you are unable to find your provisional registration certificate, you can always download the soft copy from the website itself at the provisional registration section. The MMC also provides a detailed manual for applying full registration https://meritsmmc.moh.gov.my/admin/annoucement/viewPDF/39_USER%20MANUAL%20FULL%20REGISTRATION%20MERITS.pdf

For certifying the documents, you can approach your senior MO or specialist to help to certify.

After that, your hospital admin team will do their part and send other documents regarding your housemanship training to the MMC themselves. The admin will then request for your choices of floating department and hospital choices for relocation of services as contract MO. Till the results of relocation is out, you will float in your current practicing hospital.

Due to the COVID pandemic, many of us (newly appointed floating MO) were appointed to the COVID department. Thankfully, I managed to get into the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Department due to lack of manpower. I have initially stated Anesthesia as my first choice because of the positive environment and I have managed to learn a lot as a houseman. 

Photo credits: Medicalnewstoday.com

Never would I ever thought, a mere four months in the department will change my mind. I used to always tell my parents that I would not get into Anesthesia as it looks boring since we do not get much action in the operating theatre. However, I have managed to learnt the most in this department out of all six postings. One of my favourite procedures is spinal anesthesia - a procedure where we insert a fine needle in between the spaces of our lower back spine and local anesthesia is injected to the fluid surrounding our spinal cord. The local anesthesia will then numb the nerves from our tummy downwards.

That's it for now! I will go more in depth regarding Anesthesia in my next post so stay tuned!