Professor Rusli Nordin is one of just a few experts in Malaysia teaching, researching and promoting health in the workplace.
Occupational health is a relatively new medical specialisation in Malaysia, and has only been included in medical courses there within the past ten years. The Tan Sri Jeffery Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Sunway Campus of Monash is fortunate to have an acknowledged expert in the field.
Professor Rusli Nordin (MBBS Monash, PhD Tokyo) has spent years conducting research into workplace-related illness and studying the effects of job stress upon nurses, doctors, lecturers, policemen and corporate executives. He is a member of the international Union of Risk Management for Preventive Medicine and in 2007 Chaired the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Risk Management for Preventive Medicine.
His time is currently divided between research, clinical practice at the Hospital Sultanah Aminah in Johor Bahru, and teaching into the third year of the Monash Malaysia MBBS. In the third year of the course, students study integrated medicine and surgery, together with a series of problem-based and case-based learning sessions in clinical settings. The module taught by Professor Nordin involves student visits to workplaces to identify why people develop particular work-related illnesses.
Professor Nordin is very pleased to be associated with Monash Malaysia's MBBS program, which has received accreditation from the Australian Medical Council (AMC), making it the first medical course fully conducted in Malaysia to be accredited by the AMC offshore, meaning that its graduates will be recognised to practice in Australia without having to take an additional examination.
From a research point of view, Professor Nordin is particularly interested in the rising incidence of previously unreported workplace-related illnesses in Malaysia such as asbestos-related illness. He suspects that this problem has a long history in Malaysia but has remained, in many cases, undiagnosed and unreported, possibly because general practitioners at local medical clinics were unfamiliar with the symptoms and because specialist knowledge had been unavailable until quite recently.
An understanding of the effects of work-related pressures and the means to alleviate these is of personal value to Professor Nordin as well. To help cope with a heavy and varied workload, as well as his parental responsibilities as the father of six children, he runs almost every day, plays a range of other sports and tries to maintain a sensible sleep pattern.
He also has a great fondness and talent for Karaoke, and finds that singing and music are a wonderful way to relax.
His own experience as a medical student and medical practitioner in Melbourne brings back fond memories:
"I enjoyed every moment," he says. "I even used to play footy but, sadly, they don't play football here in Malaysia."
Professor Nordin sees as one of his main challenges the raising of awareness and interest in the specialised field of Occupational Health in Malaysia. He feels that his teaching in the MBBS program will contribute to achieving this aim and hopes that not all graduates will enter the lucrative world of the corporate Occupational Health advisor, but that some will gain satisfaction, as he does, from "teaching and developing young minds".
By Maureen Kutner
