She took the plunge despite her parents’ warnings of a tough life for doctors in government hospitals. But the reality she confronted, after graduating with first-class honours, led her to put off a medical career.
Lee is now making a five-figure income as a distributor of home-made nut butter, with her key selling point being the fact that it is a product focused on health, with no additives or preservatives.
She started off selling her Yuppy Jiang nut butter at a night market for a few months before becoming a fulltime online distributor.
Her parents — a contractor father and retired teacher mother — had no objections to her switching careers.
Lee said she turned away from medicine after seeing housemen and medical officers struggling with long hours of work, being bullied occasionally and earning wages not commensurate with their work.
It was not what she had imagined when she enrolled at Mahsa University in Sepang for a five-year bacherlor’s degree in medicine and surgery in 2019, graduating five years later with first class honours, and her government student loan of RM150,000 written off as a result.
“I saw housemen and medical officers working hard with very little time for themselves when I was doing my clinical housemanship at Hospital Kuala Lumpur. The long hours — some worked for more than 36 hours straight — while putting up with some seniors and department heads who tend to bully, put me off completely.
“There is also a severe shortage of housemen and medical officers in most hospitals, which adds stress on junior doctors. Some of them go through emotional and mental anguish while at work.
“It was not the glamourous life that everyone thinks doctors have. Some are treated like dirt,” she told FMT.
Lee said the career pathways, especially the route to become specialists, were not very clear with the health ministry not doing enough to improve this. There were also several obstacles that she said were “better left unsaid”.
She said she was not surprised by a recent statement by health minister Dzukefly Ahmad that only 529 of the 5,000 slots for housemanship were taken up. Dzukefly had described the development as worsening the manpower problem in public healthcare.
Lee said she did not apply at all after graduating.
Asked if she would go back to practising medicine one day, Lee said she might if the conditions improve and clearer pathways to specialise are in place. “Also, I will only do it after my 15-month old business is managed by someone whom I can trust. It’s a very lucrative business that’s growing rapidly.”