Didn’t I say this almost 2 years ago? https://pagalavan.com/2010/04/27/no-more-nursing-schools-from-july/. The government stopped new nursing colleges from July 2010 onwards but this was what I said then:
“It is good that the government is going to stop new nursing colleges but will this solve the problem? The existing nursing colleges itself are producing thousands of nurses of doubtful quality and they will keep producing them to get profit. So the number of new nurses will continue to be produced by these colleges, or may even increase! Even now, there are fresh nurses who are unable to find a job as the government service seem to be saturated with them.”
This was 2 years ago and now, the article below written by Dr Jeyakumar clearly illustrates the current situation. I predicted this to happen and it is happening. The number of application for nursing job in my hospital is piling up day by day. Many of them are totally below par in quality and not even employable. I was made to understand that you just need 1 credit in SPM to be eligible to do nursing!! You don’t need to pay anything as the college will apply for PTPTN loan for you. And woolah, you will do the course for free and become unemployed later. Who cares about job prospects as the college has already made the money.
The same situation is also happening for radiographers, physiotherapist and pharmacy dispensers. All these private colleges are recruiting students into this courses by giving false information that there is severe shortage. Obviously the Ministry of Higher Education is sleeping or not bothered at all as we are “education hub” , mah…………
What’s next? Unemployed doctors……………………… the same scenario is already happening for medicine and thus the “so-called” moratorium of medical schools last year. BUT every medical college ( 36 of them) seem to be increasing the number of intake year by year, even introducing newer twining programmes. Housemanship is now given on contract basis and I can see some shocking news waiting for them when they finish housemanship in 2 years time.
Thousands of private college nursing grads jobless — Jeyakumar Devaraj
January 14, 2012
JAN 14 — The Higher Education Ministry’s failure to control the greed of private nursing colleges has established a situation in which thousands of their graduates are jobless. And yet, these graduates are burdened with PTPTN loans of as much as RM50,000 to RM60,000.
Here are the facts:
● 61 private institutions have been given the go-ahead by the Higher Education Ministry to conduct nursing courses;
● there are currently more than 37,500 nursing undergraduates enrolled in these 61 private learning institutions. A large percentage of these undergraduates have acquired the PTPTN loan, normally around RM55,000;
● the total amount of staff nurses employed throughout the country as of December 2010 was 61,110. Of that total, 47,992 were stationed in the government sector and the remainder 21,118 in the private sector;
● in 2010, 7,665 nursing graduates from private institutions sat for the Nursing Board examination. Only 70.1 per cent of them passed the examination compared to the passing rate of 98.4 per cent amongst graduates from Health Ministry colleges.
● Only 42.7 per cent of nursing graduates from private higher education institutions in 2010 succeeded in acquiring jobs at hospitals and clinics
Taking all these facts into account, we wish to know the following:
● Is it the Higher Education Ministry that determines the intake quotas for nursing courses in private educational institutions in Malaysia? If so, what is the rationale for allowing an intake quota of 9,000 undergraduates for the year 2011?
● Is the minister aware that every trained nurse must renew his or her professional licence (APC — Annual Practising Certificate) every year? One of the terms that is required to acquire the APC is an occupational status as a nurse in a hospital. Therefore, if one is unable to get employed as a nurse, he or she is not eligible to renew his or her APC.
● Is the minister aware that the marketability of a staff nurse will be adversely affected if she is unable to get a nursing post in a hospital? This is due to the fact that a nurse’s skills will deteriorate if the graduate is not given a chance to practise as a nurse.
● Is the minister aware that a lot of the graduates at nursing private higher education institutions originate from families that are not rich? They are hoping to get a job as a nurse in order to pay back their PTPTN loans and to aid their respective families.
● Is the minister aware that repayment of the PTPTN loan is required even if the graduate is unable to acquire a job as a nurse?
● How many of the 61 private higher education institutions currently offering nursing courses have started or are applying to start medicine courses to train doctors?
Our demands:
● Freeze the intake of new students into private nursing colleges. The market is flooded at this point in time. Do not burden more young girls with PTPTN loans that they will not be able to pay back.
● Look into the other courses that are offered by the private colleges such as physiotherapy, health care, laboratory assistants, and radiology. If there exists a similar situation of over-supply for these other courses as well, please freeze the intake of new students into these courses.
● Reject applications of private higher education institutions to conduct medicine courses if the passing rate in the Nursing Board examination was below 90 per cent for graduates from those institutions in 2010 or 2009.
● Take over the PTPTN debts for all nurse graduates who have not acquired a nursing post in hospitals despite passing the Nursing Board’s examination.
● Conduct an investigation to determine why the market for trained nurses is flooded — 37,500 will graduate in three years, whereas the need for nurses is only 1,500 per year (more or less five per cent of the total currently employed in the private sector). Is this because of poor judgment on the part of officials who determine the quota or is corruption involved? The profits of private higher education institutions are immense!
● Review the validity of the policy of relying on private companies to provide higher education for our younger generation. It is evidently clear from the actions of the private nursing colleges that maximising profits is their main focus! The existence of PTPTN loans has underwritten the income of these private higher education institutions, and they are currently competing to attract as many students as possible without a care as to whether they can provide adequate practical exposure to their students or whether there are sufficient job opportunities for their graduates.
We hope that the Higher Education Ministry officials will study the issues that we have brought up and fix a date within a month’s time to inform us of the steps that will be taken by the ministry to manage the identified problems in this memorandum. — aliran.com
* The above article is a memorandum submitted by Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj to the Higher Education Minister on December 13, 2011 expressing concern about the high number of unemployed nursing graduates.
* Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj is the member of Parliament for Sungai Siput.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.
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i remember that i mention about MMMC taking 200+ students for recent batch somewhere in your blog and someone commented that it was temporary as some technical problems and the number will be down soon, after a month DG came and announced that the college is allowed to take 200 med students and 25 extra dentistry students… i think the num will be increasing since they already keep on building new hostels… and imagine 1 batch 200, 2 batches each year, so 400 from a college per year???!!! and i heard even USM doing an indian program also (besides their local MD)
Dr Paga, do you think that there are not enough hospitals in the country? The government seems to think that there are still not enough medical workers although the market is already saturated, partly because they feel that we do not meet the doctor-patient ratio of a developed nation.
If there is the problem of having “more doctors than there are patients”, why are there unending lines at the hospital clinics, clog ups at the emergency rooms and bursting KKs? I think more hospitals need to be built and with better planning for placing them.
Coming to think about it, PJ-Subang has like only 1 government hospital – UH. I can’t think (or don’t know) any other. Isn’t that a little bit less than sufficient?
That’s because the magical number of the medical students haven’t graduated yet and the hospitals cannot increase that many to supply the demand of the future doctors.Hence, too many doctors with so few posts.I myself is one of the last year medical students to serve Malaysia next year.
First of all the government don’t “think”!! There are a lot of brainless people running the administration in this country. 10 years ago, shortage of nurses made the headlines in newspaper. Then they started to approve all these nursing colleges. Now, we are overloaded!! this is simply because of poor human resource planning.
Similarly, they want to achieve doctor:population ratio of 600:1 by 2020 and thus they started to approve all these medical schools all over the place without looking at the implications. Now, they have put their foot into their mouth.
Do you know that the doctor: population ratio in Klang Valley has already reach 1: 400? So, why is there people linning up at government hospitals and KKs? The answer is lack of public/private healthcare intergration. There are enough hospitals with adequate number of beds and doctors in Klang Valley but unfortunately only 20% of the population can afford private healthcare service in this country. Private healthcare service is fully supported by “out of pocket” money and insurance( for inpatient).
The government can’t go on building more hospitals as it puts a heavy financial burden to the government. WE have the largest civil service in the world which is taking almost 60% of the government’s revenue at this point of time. So, the government is trying to push the burden to a National Health Financing Scheme to take care of the heathcare service. Once they intergrate the KKs and GP services (1Care), the government will stop building new KKs. Soon after, that they wil corporatise government hospitals and let the corporate company to decide on how many hospitals they are going to build.
Basically, we will have enough doctors in the next 3 years. What is important is intergration of health service and proper distribution.
Because medicine can only really be learnt tangentially. Medical school doesnt really teach you to become a doctor – internship does. Medicine is alot more about management than people think, and having insufficient training positions available is dangerous as “doctors” go unsupervised.
Dr Pagalan..I had been following your blog for sometimes..Thank god there is a person like you who CARES ..you are our( Doctors) vice..THANKS..for your information I had a sister in law finished her Jururawat Masyarakat early last year under government..now nearly 1 year still waiting for posting..NOW YOU CAN SEE..
I was informed that MAs are now being sent to Klinik Desa as most KK got enough doctors. THus MAs are not needed in KKs as many as they need before. So, I wonder what will be the role of JMs soon.
MMC to be corporatised
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/275319
Yup, this was already in the pipeline when they planned the amendment of medical act, since 2009 itself! I just hope it will be more independent after that
[…] in Oct 2012, it was made official that almost 8 000 nurses are jobless as I had written over here and here. In a knee jerk reaction, the government created 1600 nursing post in government sector, […]