Microsoft Word - IJHHS IMAM 23rd ASC 2022


  
 

 S27

Most Daunting Aspect of Being a House Officer: A Survey Among Medical Graduates in a 
Malaysian Public University  
  
Aneesa Abdul Rashid1, Sazlina Shariff Ghazali1, Norhafizah Mohtaruddin2, Wan Zul Haikal Hafiz Bin 
Wan Zukiman3, Farina Mustaffa Kamal4, Nurul Amelina Nasharuddin5  
  
Objectives: Medical graduates often express their unreadiness to work due to several factors. It is 
important for medical educators to take steps toward assisting house officers (HO) to become work 
ready. This study assessed the most daunting aspects of being a HO as perceived by medical graduates 
in a public Malaysian university.   
Methods: This was part of a larger study entitled “Development of an Online Module for Medical 
Graduates’ Readiness to Work”. The first part of this study involves an online survey on medical 
graduates from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) from November 2020 to January 2022. The survey 
used was the “Confidence and Readiness to Work as a House Officer Questionnaire” that consists of 
75 questions altogether. Two of the questions were on readiness to work, of which one asked “In my 
opinion, the most daunting aspect of being a HO is?” There were 8 choices: (i) Physical demand: 
difficulty in maintaining patience; (ii) Physical demand: difficulty in maintaining clinical judgement; 
(iii) Confronting the seniors; (iv) Handling patients with responsibilities (including communication) (v) 
Competence required in knowledge and judgement; (vi) Competence required in practical skills; (vii) 
Time management; (viii) Having to adjust to different routines in work and life. Ethics was granted 
from the Ethics Committee for Research Involving Human Subjects UPM (JKEUPM-2020-341).    
Results: One hundred and fifty-nine medical graduates completed the questionnaire. They were mostly 
female (69.2%), single (99.4%), Muslim (56.6%) and Malay (54.7%). The most daunting aspects were 
“Competence required in knowledge and judgement” (36.5%), followed by “Handling patients with 
responsibilities (including communication) (17.6%) and “Physical demand: difficulty in maintaining 
clinical judgement” (15.7%).   
Conclusion: More than one third of the respondents selected “competence in knowledge and 
judgement” as the most daunting aspect of becoming HO. Future research should further investigate 
these factors.   
  
Keywords: House Officer, work readiness, medical graduates, media education  
  

1. Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti 
Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Malaysia  
2. Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra 
Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Malaysia  
3. Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra 
Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Malaysia  
4. Department of Pathology & Veterinary Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary 
Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Malaysia  
5. Department of Multimedia, Faculty of Computer Science and Information 
Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Malaysia  

  
 

 

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Correspondence to: Aneesa Abdul Rashid, Associate Professor and Medical Lecturer, Department of 
Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, 
Malaysia, aneesa@upm.edu.my 

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31344/ijhhs.v7i70.529