Introductions

A little bit about my past working stint.

I'm a medical doctor by profession. I graduated from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) in the year 2010. From there, I started my Housemanship in Pusat Perubatan Universiti Malaya (PPUM) from 2011 to 2013, after which I moved to a district posting in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan as a medical officer in Klinik Kesihatan Rembau. After slightly more than 1 year, towards the end of 2014, I asked for a transfer and was send to National Health Financing (NHF) unit in the Planning Division (Bahagian Peracangan) at the Ministry of Health headquarters in Putrajaya. At the point of writing this post, I have been in NHF for more than 2 years plus from 2015 to present year 2017.

Why Public Health?

When asked this question time and time again, I realized my answers are ever evolving. I never had my eyes fixed on a particular specialty during my Housemanship years. But I did realize one thing about myself that I often openly admit to others - I'm a big picture kind of person. Hence the case, I could not imagine myself being "stuck" in a specialty that is focused on one particular system. 

During the transition to become a medical officer, although at that time I was still unsure whether I wanted to pursue a specialty or not, I narrowed them down to two choices which is either Emergency Medicine or Public Health. For obvious reasons, you can see why I chose these 2 options (or maybe not so obvious but I don't feel like explaining haha).

So it is, that when I was posted to a health clinic and from then was send to an administrative/policy-making post in NHF, I took it that God was ushering me to where my career path should go.

Moving Forward

In the course of the journey moving towards getting to where I envisioned myself to be one day as a Public Health Specialist, I found out one thing - there are not many public reviews or experience sharing on the net of how it is to get there. 

And so, the idea of writing this blog took place to fill that void. Killing two birds with one stone, I also get to document and chronicle my academic life for my own personal life synthesis. 

So, lets begin.