On Medical Education and Houseman Training

Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, our former health minister and now the Chairman of the Government Policy Monitoring Bureau in the MCA comments realistically on this issue.

These are excerpts of his opinion...

...Over the years, MMC have recognized more than 300 over medical degrees all over the world. I did call for a review of all the degrees recognized by the MMC so that the list of recognition could be updated. Some of the universities have obviously passed their prime of life, for example the university of Iraq is also recognized for medical training. I generally support that there should be a total review of medical degree from Indonesia, Middle-East countries, Russia and Ukranian countries.

Medical training requires you to take patient’s history and sending our students to foreign countries when English is hardly spoken, for example in Prague and Russia, Malaysia students have to struggle like hell to learn the language and then communicate with the patients. Back home, they have to translate these into Bahasa and English and local dialect and this is not going to be easy. Often, the student becomes an incompetent houseman. A lot of these houseman are often clueless about the pattern of medical diseases in a tropical country like Malaysia. A lot do not even know how to take proper medical history. Even a simple medical examination of a pregnant woman is beyond some of these young interns. ...

From the Malaysian Medical Resources,

What he says is indeed food for thought. Studying medicine in a far away land in a foreign language is tough. Is the training suitable for those returning home?

Will the MMC heed Dr. Chua’s call:

The MMC need to totally review and update:

1) The list of medical universities recognized currently. It should be brave enough to recommend to the Minister of Health to deregister some of these as I did to the Crimea Medical University.
2) The program training for housemen should be more structured with adequate supervision.
3) Signing up housemen at the end of their two years should not be “fait acompli” so that housemen become more committed in undergoing 2 years of vigorous training.

To read the whole article at Dr. Chua's blog, please click here HERE
or follow the discussions in the MMR website HERE.

Do feel free to post your comments on this topic here or directly at his BLOG . It is discouraging to know that we are treated as second class citizens even by our ministers after six years of hard work just to qualify for our degree.